Length: 90'
Director: Viola Stephan
Written and Directed: by Viola Stephan
Cinematography: Pavel Lebeshev
Editor: Yvonne Loquens
Sound: Wolfgang Widmer
Executive Producer: Renée Gundelach
Production: Viola Stephan Filmproduktion
Contact: sredafilm.com
World Sales: Büro für Dramaturgie
sales@buerofuerdramaturgie.com
Producción Ejecutiva: Renée Gundelach
Productora: Viola Stephan Filmproduktion
Contacto: sredafilm.com
World Sales: Büro für Dramaturgie
sales@buerofuerdramaturgie.com
World Premiere
How can the end of a war manifest itself socially, if its experiences continue to shape the present? Kriegsende (War’s End) was produced in 1991, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union under the working title Russians in Berlin. The film was shot two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall between October 1991 and March 1992 in the eastern and western parts of Berlin. Filming took place around the former Soviet garrison in Potsdam, at the Wünsdorf headquarters, in one of the retreating Red Army’s military trains, at the Soviet border in Brest and along the Oder-Neisse line at the Seelow Heights. Following the demise of the GDR (1990), the official end of the Cold War (Paris Charter, 1990) and the referendum on the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), Berlin underwent rapid changes, and became a symbol of reunification and the great upheaval it brought. When the city became the federal capital, West Berlin was no longer an island but a metropolis with vast surroundings. East Berlin was becoming part of the West. The city’s once-deserted arteries leading eastwards were revitalising.
4k restoration 2023
The digital restoration of the documentary film was carried out by PHAROS – The Post Group. The source material for the 4K scan was the 35mm original negative and the original sound mix from Deutsche Kinemathek.
War’s End marks the beginning of the restoration project »INTERIM – the 1990s in Viola Stephan’s film productions«, initiated and supervised by Jana Cisar (film producer) and Vivien Buchhorn (film historian/curator) in collaboration with Viola Stephan.