Three Senegalese women are filmed within their families, performing their daily tasks: cooking water, looking after the children, plaiting hair, sorting rice. They go about their daily routines under adverse conditions: eating with the extended family, washing up, watching a soap opera on the television, endless repetitions. The women’s energy wanes between the rain showers and the torrid heat. We are surrounded by quietness, on the brink of standstill.

We are watching them.

Each of the three women tell the same story in front of the camera, each in her own language - French, Wolof and Diolla. It is the African tale of the two Koumbas: two half sisters – one an enslaved stepchild, the other one a spoiled child – who take different journeys through the world of ghosts. The women lead us into their invisible world, bringing to light their traditions and values such as humility, politeness and respect. Myth is their link to the world. "And she went and went and went to wash the spoon in the sea where the devil resides."

Now they are watching us.

Once upon a time there was a place where cooking pots with holes in them were still mended and where men still kept their wedding vows. The Slovaks Jozef Ploštica, Jan Raček and Vasil Dubay have travelled for many years through Europe as tinkers and mousetrap sellers. Along the way, they have repaired every single holey pot they encountered and never failed to free any infested courtyard from mice with their ingenious mousetraps. Their work and wanderings have taught them to understand life and its people. Their deep rootedness in the life of simple folk has always shown them where and for what they were needed.

They have now reached the "end of their journey" and the men reflect on their itinerant lives, sitting at home in their intimate kitchens where today mended pots are still being used and where their old wives are still in command. What remains is their faith in people and in the fundamental archaic values of friendship and love that have nourished them over the years. Ende einer Reise is a warm-hearted film about the loveable features of simple people and the disappearance of a culture.

Award: Förderpreis der DEFA-Stiftung, Leipzig 2005; nominated for the German Camera Award