Films by Volker Koepp

2026, 200 min
by Volker Koepp

“Sarmatische Zeit” (Sarmatian Time) is the name of a poetry collection by Johannes Bobrowski, which becomes a personal, lyrical leitmotif for Volker Koepp in this visually striking, far-reaching exploration of the region between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, along the Memel, Dnister and Pruth rivers. It is a place of different origins, longings and crimes: a melting pot for myriad cultures and affiliations, a point of reference and refuge for over half a century in the work of th

Germany 2023, 178 min
by Volker Koepp

In Uwe Johnson’s last study in the English town of Sheerness, there was a map of Mecklenburg on the wall – the region of his childhood, to which he never returned after his emigration to the West and could only reconstruct in the literary sense afterwards. Volker Koepp’s film is conceived as a geobiography: he travels with Johnson’s texts to places from the author’s life, finding people and landscapes connected to his work and his person, sometimes closely, sometimes more loosely. Koepp’s and Jo

Germany 2018, 135 min
by Volker Koepp

With SEESTÜCK, Volker Koepp concludes a series of documentaries that he began in 2010 with BERLIN-STETTIN. In this film, the director mixed autobiographical references with his description of East German film and living spaces for the first time. IN SARMATIA, 2013 he expanded the view of the region east of the Weichsel (Vistula) and between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. With LANDSTÜCK, 2016, Volker Koepp returned to the Uckermark in the north of Berlin. SEESTÜCK - a film about the Baltic Sea

2016, 122 min
by Volker Koepp

Idyllic landscape shots and conversations with local inhabitants convey the different facets of theUckermark in eastern Germany: a unique natural habitat, an embodiment of demographic change,a battle zone where agribusiness and organic farming duke it out. The end moraines of the Uckermark have kept Volker Koepp busy for decades. Following the socio-historical Uckermark, he devotes himself in Landstück even more intensively to conveying the sensory experience of this sparsely populated

Germany 2013, 120 min
by Volker Koepp

There are two contrasting ways to describe Sarmatia: as a region on the edge of the known world – that's how the old Greeks saw it -, or as the part of Europe where the once carefully measured geographical centre of the continent is. However, you will probably look in vain for Sarmatia in your school atlas, it doesn’t exist as an administrative unit, and Google Maps won't help either. Yet Sarmatia is not a chimera. Volker Koepp travelled there for his new film, generously allowing us to share hi