Films by Gregor Streiber

2022, 105 min
by Tina Tripp

"Shall I stay or shall I go?" This question makes young people in East Pomerania sway between departure and attachment to their homeland, pragmatism and diffuse longings. MID SEASON follows 4 trainees in the hotel business on an island that is disintegrating into a booming, touristy coastal strip with shiny facades and a desolate hinterland. Just as their place of work, the hotel, is a transitory place, so the young people are in a transitory phase of life.»Bleiben oder Gehen?« Diese Frage lässt Jugendliche in Ostvorpommern schwanken zwischen Aufbruch und Heimatverbundenheit, zwischen Pragmatismus und diffusen Sehnsüchten. Sie leben in einem Land, das zerfällt in einen touristischen Küstenstreifen mit Hochglanzfassade und ein verödendes, langsam ausblutendes Hinterland. ZWISCHENSAISON lässt vier Auszubildende als ProtagonistInnen auftreten, setzt sie in einer visuell inszenierten Form in Bezug zu ihren Lebensräumen und stellt die Frage: Wohin ins Leben aufbrechen an einem Ort, der gezeichnet ist von auseinanderdriftenden gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen.

2020, 87 min
by Martina Priessner

For 20 years, the Syrian Orthodox nun Dayrayto lives on the grounds of a church in Zaz, a dilapidated and abandoned Assyrian village in southeastern Turkey. Ever since the monk died six years ago she lives alone with her animals. Her presence in the region is a thorn in the side of many local actors. Lately, the situation is getting worse. Dayrayto, however, made a vow to protect the church and not to leave the holy place, even at the cost of her life.

Germany 2019, 98 min
by Grit Lemke

"My swing is in an enchanted garden, behind the railway embankment. Up in the air, on my swing, I see the trains, squeaking past day and night shedding black dust. They come out of the huge holes that gape between our villages. As a child, I think the whole world looks like this: Holes, with villages between, my swing in the middle. And the trains. They're coal trains." Gerhard Gundermann (1955–1998), singer-songwriter, poet and excavator operator in the Lusatian brown coal mines. In this region, global problems are condensed on a local level as if by a burning glass – from structural change to climate crisis. Mostly unpublished archive material and Gundermann’s songs enter into a dialogue with observations and conversations in his 'district', accompanied by the voice-over of the director, who is no less deeply rooted in the coal mining district. Home and its destruction through strip mining, utopian ideas and the question of individual responsibility run through the songs, as do their consequences for gainful employment and the environment at the end of the industrial age. And they are more topical than ever today: "Where my swing stood, then your digger, is now a lake." (DOK Leipzig, Frederik Lang)