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The secret of the success of the HEIMAT sequels is that they tap into our collective experiences and memories. The audience sees more than just a film: their own lives become the theme and the aesthetic subject matter. In the first sequel it was the memory of a rural past, which plays so large a role in life in the towns. With HEIMAT 2 it was the student years of the Sixties which opened up a flood of exciting memories for the many people who lived through them. With the fall of the Wall and the events that followed, “Heimat” suddenly became an issue again:
HEIMAT 3 tells of the climate of disruption during the time following the fall of the Wall and the dreams that were dreamt in the East and in the West, and which more or less came true.
Narrator and director Edgar Reitz sees himself as an observer of ambiences and of people in the flow of contemporary history. Joining him as co-author is Thomas Brussig, a partner who, by virtue of his origins and his literary experience of the East, guarantees the authentic rendering of the East Germans, the stories of their lives, their way of thinking and talking.
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'When the world is without borders and places become arbitrary, then 'Heimat' is no longer an expression of place, but has become an expression of time. Film is the only art form able to avert the fleeting of time. Even cinema cannot stop time, but it can tell of it. Film can be Heimat.'
- Edgar Reitz
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The two film cycles HEIMAT and HEIMAT 2, are recognised milestones in the history of television. HEIMAT 3 is not only the third part of the trilogy, but also a narrative inventory of the century in its final decade. Its inner theme is one of the endings and beginnings. In six tragicomic episodes, HEIMAT 3 tells of the spirit of renewal of the early 1990s, recording how what began as German dreams became less and less German, losing themselves in global immensity.
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