Dorfliebe

Directed by Pamela Meyer-Arndt

Ute and Werner Mahler are among the most important contemporary German photographers. They are famous for their photographs in the GDR magazine SIBYLLE and as co-founders of the OSTKREUZ photo agency. Ute Mahler was born at the end of October 1949 in the village of Berka an der Wipper in the Kyffhäuserkreis district of Thuringia. Her father was a master miller, and her home was the mill. DORFLIEBE shows Berka from the 1950s to the present day through the photographs of the Mahlers—and Ute Mahler's father Ludwig Schirmer, a passionate amateur photographer. The film gradually reveals the Mahlers' relationship with Berka and its inhabitants. A Heimatfilm – a film about home – that also shows how the people of Berka repeatedly struggle to build a new life for themselves: after the war, under socialism, in the period around 1989, and as citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany.