KOLONIALMAMA, EINE REISE IN DIE GEGENWART DER VERGANGENHEIT

German Africa! The director’s mother, Ruth Heller, now 99 years old, grew up in the so-called "German-Southwest-Africa". Her childhood in Swakopmund, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, on the edge of a vast desert in what is now Namibia was safe and secure. Her father, the director’s beloved grandfather, was a railway executive. A few years before the birth of his children, he fought against the uprising of the Hereros and thus participated in the first genocide in German history. After World War I, he and his family were sent back to Germany by the British Army.

Grandson Peter found himself naturally drawn to the side of the underdogs and has made countless films in Africa. To this day though he had buried his family’s own colonial past. Now he is seizing his last chance to retrace history and come to terms with his mother’s past and possibly with the colonial past of Germany. In Kolonialmama, the master of long-term observations turns his gaze inwards towards his own family story, a story that remained repressed for nearly a hundred years.

Nominated for the Talent Award of the Bavarian Film and Television Fund, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern