Films by Sandra Kaudelka

2020, 99 min
by Sandra Kaudelka

Sahra Wagenknecht’s diary is bursting at the seams. Interviews, emergency talks, press conferences and photo shoots; it’s all in a day’s work for left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht. Hers is a life full of applause and admiration but also extreme pressure, doubt, intrigue and public hostility. Wagenknecht’s greatest motivation is the fight against the rise of the “new right” in parliament and society. Director Sandra Kaudelka filmed the politician and her team, up close and personal for two years, capturing public appearances, interactions with colleagues, and private moments. The result is a dense chronicle of a nerve-wracking time: In the spring of 2017, half a year before federal elections, The Left (Die Linke) stands a chance of becoming part of the German federal government for the first time since reunification; in early 2019 Wagenknecht succumbs to exhaustion and announces her withdrawal from political leadership.WAGENKNECHT is a multi-layered film about idealism and the commitment to fight for one’s convictions. It tells the story of a life inexorably linked to politics – and of the cost of standing one’s ground amidst the storm of absurdity and power that is the Berlin establishment. The film premieres this February at the Berlinale and will be released in German cinemas on March 18th.

Germany 2013, 93 min
by Sandra Kaudelka

In I WILL NOT LOSE director Sandra Kaudelka, having been a talented athlete herself in her youth, portrays four former top athletes of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), who used to go to their mental and physical limits for their carrers – and even beyond. Sandra Kaudelka made her very own experiences with the sports system of the GDR, in which she was trained in her childhood. Still coping with these experiences today, she examines how her own life would have been, if the Fall of the Wall hadn’t liberated her from the daily drill and pressure to succeed. So she visits four former top athletes - four people with four totally different biographies: Brita Baldus, Ines Geipel, Marita Koch and Udo Beyer. Through the clash of these different pathes of life, I WILL NOT LOSE enables an extraordinary and personal insight into the former system of the GDR and the German German history.For after the Fall of the Wall, each of the four protagonists dealt in their very own way with both the end of their carrers and the transition from socialism into western capitalism.