Return from the desert
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Return from the desert |
| Country of production |
GDR Algeria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1990 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bernhard Stephan |
| script |
Bernd Schirmer (scenario) Peter Jakubeit (dramaturgy) |
| production |
DEFA , KAG "Berlin" ENPA Algerie |
| music | Peter Kuno Kühnel |
| camera | Otto Hanisch |
| cut | Margrit Brusendorff |
| occupation | |
| |
Return from the Desert is a German-Algerian feature film by DEFA and ENPA Algeria by Bernhard Stephan from 1990, based on the novel Return from the Desert or The Seven Day Ring by Konrad Potthoff from 1986.
action
In an Algerian town near the desert, young people are being trained in various professions. The facility and the staff are provided by the GDR and one of these helpers is Thomas Tänzer, who worked as a driver and girl for everything there. Thomas is a trained electrician, who has dropped out of college and is divorced. He had applied for this assignment abroad because he didn't want to be like his father and he was of the opinion that in his mid-twenties life couldn't be over. Most of his colleagues went to Algeria with their spouses and that is one of the reasons why he flew back to the GDR early after three years. The reason was called Doris and was the wife of a colleague whose marriage was already broken when the relationship began. In the collective evaluation of this problem, Thomas was to leave the country first, but Doris insisted that she and her husband go home. But in the “little GDR”, as Thomas calls the training center, he keeps having problems with his superior. Be it helping an Algerian alcoholic or repairing a water pump in the next village, he keeps breaking the rules. So he too has to start his journey home. Before departure, the Algerian director of the training workshop, who had studied in the GDR, asked him to take a valuable seven-day ring with him to his former German friend Angela. Those who wear this ring will be lucky seven days a week.
Back in the GDR, Thomas first drives to his apartment in Stralsund and then to his parents straight away, because his father's health is very poor. However, his mother assures him that she can handle the care on her own. So he takes his Wartburg , which he got without the normal waiting times for his foreign assignment, and takes it to Berlin. He gives his passport to the management department of his company and asks about his future career. However, with reference to the assessments in his cadre file, the cadre manager does not want to know anything more about the prospects as a foreign cadre promised to him. The latter suggests that he work as an electrician again.
After Thomas realizes that he is not welcome while visiting his divorced wife and son, he quickly disappears. Before that, however, his former wife makes it clear to him that it was he who wanted the separation. Now he makes an appointment with Doris, who has since been divorced from her husband and he learns the reason why she wanted to go back to the GDR instead of Thomas. She was pregnant by him. But he cannot deal with this situation either. Completely exhausted, he drives on with the car until he overturns in a meadow with it. But the damage is so minor that the car is still roadworthy and so it drives on.
In a nursing home, Thomas meets Angela, who does not want to hear from her former Algerian boyfriend. Only after several attempts can he convince her to accept the seven-day ring and they start talking. When saying goodbye, she gives Thomas the advice to return to Doris and to think about the future with her.
production
Return from the desert was filmed by DEFA -Studio for feature films (Artistic Working Group “Berlin”) and ENPA Algerie (Algiers) on ORWO -Color and had its festive premiere on March 22nd, 1990 at the Berlin Kino International . It was first broadcast on television on August 11, 1996 on the ORB .
criticism
Birgit Galle wrote in Neues Deutschland that this is a contemporary film from the past that came too late for the audience. A problem with almost all performers was that they only recited their lyrics. What was not surprising about the texts presented was that they were bulky, cool and artless, even banal and sometimes flat.
The Lexicon of International Films writes that this is a boring problem film that only touches upon many questions.
literature
- Return from the desert In: F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 497.
Web links
- Return from the desert in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Return from the desert at filmportal.de
- Return from the desert at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ New Germany of March 23, 1990; P. 4.
- ↑ Return from the desert. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .