In Sarmatien

Sarmatia is both an ancient empire between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea and, according to the poet Johannes Bobrowski, a ‘poetic dreamland in which all peoples and religions would find a place if history had not ploughed everything up again and again’. Once the centre of Europe, today, in 2024, once again the scene of a war that was already in the air when the film was made. From this point of view, the questions about life, hope and the future that Koepp poses to the mainly young people he encounters and re-encounters in SAMARTIEN (which ties in with the two Czernowitz films) seem bittersweet. The images and landscapes seem to come from a time long past, and yet they are completely present: a ‘Heimatfilm’, one of the most beautiful of its kind.