Films by Adrian Stähli

Germany 2019, 83 min
by Sebastian Heinzel

How much soldier is still alive in me?, Sebastian Heinzel asks himself when he learns from the Wehrmacht archives that his grandfather fought in Russia during the Second World War. Grandpa Hans had never told his family about the mission.Inspired by these discoveries, the filmmaker travels to the places where his grandfather was stationed as a soldier. He encounters unexpected connections to his own life and to his war dreams, which have been haunting him for decades. As Sebastian gets deeper into the search, he gets his father involved, which breaks a silence that has blanketed his father and brings the two closer together. The film shows how knots in one's own family history can be loosened and how changes can be made.New research from epigenetics indicates that enormous stress experiences change the genetic make-up. These groundbreaking insights offer a window onto inheritance the descendants carry on their shoulders - often without being aware of it. With the help of scientists, therapists and authors, the director explores how far-reaching collective events such as flight, expulsion and genocide reach into the second and third generations.Against the background of the global refugee crisis and international tensions, the film explores the long-term consequences of war and the work we must do in ourselves in order to make healing and reconciliation possible.

Germany 2017, 95 min
by David Sieveking

David Sieveking’s autobiographical feature doc FAMILY SHOTS tells the story of a loving couple and the challenges they face when their first baby is born. Confronted with the extensive vaccination schedule for newborns they realize they do not agree on this issue. To solve their conflict and insecurity David sets out on a research trip to unearth the facts and dispel the myths surrounding vaccinations. Constantly torn between his family duties at home and his investigations David travels through Europe and as far as West Africa to get to the bottom of it. FAMILY SHOTS is both, a tongue-in-cheek family comedy and a profound research into the global impact of vaccination today.A documentary by David Sieveking in co-production with Lichtblick Film, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg., in cooperation with ARTE.With the support of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Film- und Medienstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessische Filmförderung and Deutscher Filmförderfonds/FFA. Distributed by farbfilm verleih.

2013, 88 min
by David Sieveking, Catrin Vogt

In FORGET ME NOT, David Sieveking portrays the domestic care of his mother Gretel, who, like millions of others, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.David’s parents were active in the student movement of the 1960s and led an „open relationship“, which is now being tested in a dramatic way through the mother’s illness.The changes taking place within the mother forces the family to deal with its own conflicts and even teaches them new ways to express their feelings and experience intimacy, bringing them all closer together.With humor and candor, David Sieveking’s family chronicle is characterized by unaffected participation and loving affection, where it is the human being at the center of the story, not the illness.

Germany, Austria 2010, 97 min
by David Sieveking

The young filmmaker David Sieveking follows the path of his professional idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM). It is a journey that leads him to the movement's founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the one-time guru of the Beatles. By the time he died 2008, Maharishi had expanded TM into a global conglomerate and offering courses that promised world peace and yogic flying. How does this chime with the somber films of David Lynch? Inspired by his idol, the young director Sieveking starts to meditate, too, submerging himself ever deeper in the strange world of TM. In doing so he gets a look into more than just his own abyss.