Hunger for life

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Movie
Original title Hunger for life
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2004
length 95 minutes
Rod
Director Markus Imboden
script Ines Keerl
Scarlett Kleint
production Hans-Werner Honert
camera Hans Grimmelmann
cut Ursula Höf
occupation

Hunger auf Leben is a German feature film from 2004. It was based on the diaries of the writer Brigitte Reimann .

action

The film is set in the GDR between 1955 and 1972. The talented young writer Brigitte Reimann comes from the small town of Burg near Magdeburg , where she lives in a house with her parents, brother Lutz and husband Günter. Brigitte escapes the tightness of her apartment and life with her imagination and writing, which is completely alien to her husband. At a writers' meeting in Magdeburg, she met the editor Jochen Hensel. He supports her and spends a night of love with her. For the first time she meets a man who understands her. Back in Burg, however, she is confronted with the jealousy of her husband, who beats her and throws her beloved typewriter out the window. But above all, she has her brother Lutz as defense attorney. The rioting husband ends up in jail. The pregnant Brigitte remains behind, but she loses the child and, in her loneliness and hopelessness, attempts suicide, but is saved by her brother.

Brigitte now meets with the talented writer Siegfried Pitschmann , who has problems with his publisher and is not published. The relationship with him not only develops into a love story, Pitschmann becomes a brother in spirit. Brigitte was able to complete her novel Die Frau am Pranger and successfully publish it in 1956. However, the Stasi also approached Brigitte Reimann. Major Zürner believes he has found a colleague in her, but quickly realizes that the opposite is the case. Zürner becomes an enemy of life for the writer who will influence her life in the dark.

After problems with the writers' association and the party, Brigitte and Pitschmann, who are now a couple, come to Hoyerswerda to get to know life on the working base. The relationship falls into a crisis. Pitschmann withdraws into inner exile and suffers from writer's block, while Brigitte seems to be starting a relationship with the writing worker Jon. A triangular relationship is created. Brigitte does not know, however, that Stasi major Zürner has put the criminal Jon with the prospect of amnesty on Brigitte Reimann.

At the end of the 1960s, Brigitte Reimann began her novel Franziska Linkerhand , which describes life in prefabricated housing estates in the GDR and criticizes the inhumanity of this architecture. She gives the first seven chapters to the editor Jochen Hensel to read, but he has fallen out of favor with the state and is no longer responsible for literature.

Brother Lutz Reimann has meanwhile gone to the West because he could no longer bear the tightness and professional restrictions in the GDR. She met him one last time when he visited his parents again in the GDR in 1971. Even if she can't stand his criticism of life in the GDR, she still feels the strongest bond with him and wishes that he could be her husband after all. Shortly after this visit, she discovered lumps in her breast, but was late for treatment, and the breast cancer had already spread to the point that it could no longer be cured. Brigitte Reimann dies at the age of only 39 without being able to finish her last novel.

background

The film was based on the diaries I regret nothing (1955 to 1963) and Everything tastes like goodbye (1964 to 1970).

Reviews

  • film-dienst : The differentiated study of the life of a woman who failed in all respects and who tried to use her writing as therapy, but whose last resort was illness, is carried out by outstanding actors; Martina Gedeck in particular proves once again that she is one of the exceptional phenomena in the local cinema and television industry.

Awards

Web links