Films by Herbert Schwering - COIN FILM

Germany 2016, 92 min
by Andreas Maus

Wednesday afternoon was deliberately chosen. There were a lot of customers in front of and in the brothers Özcan and Hasan Yildirim’s barbershop on 9 June 2004, when 700 three-inch carpenters’ nails turned into projectiles with a 250 metre range. 22 people were injured. The attack was infamous; the course of the investigations was equally scandalous: the victims were suspected. CCTV material was not analysed and Federal Minister of the Interior Otto Schily decisively ruled out a right wing background. It was only in 2001 that this crime was solved in the course of the revelations concerning the right wing extremist terrorist “National Socialist Underground” group. The trial continues until the present day.Ten years after the Cologne nail bomb attack, director Andreas Maus focuses on giving a voice to those whom nobody wanted to hear for a long time. He deploys narrative strategies to establish a distance in order to expose how systematically matters were hushed up, suppressed and denied. Documentary and re-enacted material are interwoven, actors perform next to affected persons, spaces are reconstructed. Maus overwrites the hackneyed televised images with his own visual inventions. The camera stops, the look at the audience freezes. One is tempted to ask what exactly is supposed to come after the 'culture of welcome'? (DOKLeipzig, Cornelia Klauß)

Germany 2009
by Hans-Erich Viet

What is going on in Germany? Is Germany realy a pain in the neck? And if so, why? In this documentary road-movie shot between 2005 and 2008, director Hans-Erich Viet travels through Germany to find out just how the German soul ticks. The journey took place without any concrete planed destinations, but rather was determined through the events that took place and offers answers to all the moaning and groaning going on in Germany today.