Danach hätte es schön sein müssen

In 1974, a woman commits suicide in a German Hotel. In 1997, I meet her husband again. He is still living in the flat into which he moved 41 years ago with the woman - his wife - and a daughter. The flat has remained virtually unchanged. The man is my father. Over the course of the two and a half years that follow I film him. I observe the father, I even follow him on a Carribean cruise. I record conversations. The camera enables both distance and proximity. Karin Jurschick blends those very personal recordings with dramatized scenes, created by herself, and with archive material from the Nazi era in Germany as well as from the 1950s and 60s in West Germany. This mix of self-shot and found footage evokes the atmosphere in postwar West Germany and follows the traces of this past into the present day. As she reconstructs her family's individual history, she also reveals how closely it is intertwined with a German and European collective memory. The film had its world premiere during the Berlinale Forum, 2001, and was shown at dok.fest Munich, Visions du Réel in Nyon, Duisburg Filmweek und at the Festival of New Cinema in Pesaro / Italy.