Heimat is a Space in Time

Thomas Heise’s acclaimed cinematic essay on his family through the upheavals of 20th-century German history opens March 13-19, 2020 at Anthology Film Archives.

New York, New York: In the powerful and luminous black-and-white film Heimat is a Space in Time, Thomas Heise explores “heimat,” his family home and homeland, through the upheavals of 20th-century German history. Winner of the Caligari Film Prize at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival and Best Film in the International Competition at Visions du Réel 2019, and official selections of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival, Heimat is a Space in Time will make its U.S. theatrical debut via Icarus Films on March 13-19, 2020 at Anthology Film Archives in New York City and Lumiere Cinema at the Music Hall in Los Angeles, followed by engagements nationwide.

About the film

In Heimat is a Space in Time, Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, in their own words. He sets the tone early, reading an anti-war essay written in 1912 by his grandfather Wilhelm, when he was a schoolboy. The director uses the same matter-of-fact, uninflected tone throughout the film – as he reads letters and notes from relatives who lived through the horrors of the First World War, Nazi Germany, and then life in Communist East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Heimat is a Space in Time offers no context, no talking heads, no analysis; the potent imagery and seemingly simple narration is the documentary’s greatest strength. One segment involves Heise’s grandparents, a “mixed” Jewish-gentile couple living in Vienna during the Nazi era. Their letters capture the increasing measures taken against Jews: banned from buses, losing access to coal ration cards, and lastly being forced to a concentration camp in Poland. As Heise reads, lists with the names of Jews slated for deportation scroll by.

An essential film in Heise’s oeuvre—many of his previous films were banned in the former East Germany, where he lived until the fall of the Berlin Wall—Heimat is a Space in Time is an understated epic that brilliantly marries the written word, image, and sound design. The unspoken message is that the past, even as those who remember it slip away, remains with us.

Germany/Austria, 2019, 218 mins, Black & White and Color, In German with English subtitles

An Icarus Films release
For more information, visit : AnthologyFilm