Heimat is a Space in Time
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The Best Yet-to-be-Distributed Docs 2019
Bouncing around the doc fest circuit this past year, I saw more nonfiction films than could possibly be considered mentally advisable, from sneak-out-of-the-theater duds to unheralded gems I couldn’t wait to rave about. And counterintuitively, it’s those in the latter category, the vast majority international cinematic nonfiction, that always leave me most frustrated. While I can talk (and write) about those films, I can’t bring them to a US theater (or streaming service) near you. What I can do is compile a list of the few films that managed to stick in my brain all the way through to the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Dec 30, 2019 -
“I Tried to Take a Look at These Things from a Distant Future”: Thomas Heise on his TIFF-Premiering Berlin Doc, Heimat is a Space in Time
Winner of the Caligari Film Prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Heimat is a Space in Time is German documentarian Thomas Heise’s absorbing look at 20th-century history in his homeland via his own family’s artifacts — most notably astonishingly intimate letters that sweep us from the rise of Nazism, to the Cold War division of the country, to life on the Stasi-controlled side of the Berlin Wall. Three generations of firsthand accounts, read in unobtrusive voiceover, are gracefully interwoven with family photos and archival images to create a nearly three-and-a-half-hour cinematic epic — one that unfolds in digestible parts like a […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 6, 2019
