TARKOWSKIJ UND ICH

A life between times and countries. For years and years, it’s been the same ritual in this small council flat in Bensheim, a village in the Hessian wine region. An old woman, the director’s own grand-mother, carries her chair closer to the window and stares out at the empty cross-roads in front of the house. Eugenia Vaisman was the only one in the family who was unable to adapt when she emigrated from Riga to Germany 8 years ago.

"I’ve always wondered what my grandma might be thinking, when she was looking out the window. How can you keep watching such a boring view for hours, weeks, months or even years? But when I energetically closed the curtains, she became sad and said: 'This is my only joy, leave it to me!'. The window to the street is a window to the past: to the time when, together with the red army, she freed half of Europe from Fascism. As a doctor, she was always present on the front line. Or it is a window to the time after the war, when she was working as an emergency doctor in Riga. Thus, the everyday gloom becomes a journey, which leads us to a universal metaphor of the homeless immigrant." Eldar Grigorian