Forget Mine Don't (2012)

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Movie
Original title Forget Me Not
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2012
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
JMK 8
Rod
Director David Sieveking
script David Sieveking
production Martin Heisler
Carl-Ludwig Rettinger
music Jessica de Rooij
camera Adrian Stahli
cut Catrin Vogt
occupation

Don't forget mine - How my mother lost her memory and my parents rediscovered love is a German documentary by David Sieveking from 2012 . The film had its world premiere on August 5, 2012 at the 65th Locarno Festival , the German premiere took place on November 1, 2012 at the 55th Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film . The German theatrical release of the film was on January 31, 2013.

content

David Sieveking shows the last years of his own mother Gretel, who has Alzheimer's disease . After David's father Malte had looked after his wife for many years, he reached the limit of his resilience. David moves back into his parents' house so that his father can go on vacation in Switzerland.

In agreement with his sisters and his father, Sieveking documents his life with his mother with the camera. The mother's illness shows up again and again. However, she does not lose her courage to face life. Her son gets to know her again from a completely different side and is soon mistaken for her husband. Mother and son go to Stuttgart to see Gretel's sister and then to Switzerland to pick up the father. Malte once again developed a loving relationship full of intimacy and romance with his wife, which she also reciprocated.

Since Gretel can no longer report anything from the past, her son sets out to find his parents' past. He documents the historical events with Super 8 films, photos, old interviews and his mother's diaries. In the Swiss Federal Archives in Bern , he tracks down state security protocols on his mother's political activities at the time. In Zurich he meets Peter Niggli , his mother's former lover, who talks about their love affair. David acts as the narrator in the film and comments on the events.

At the end of the film, Gretel is permanently bedridden, she won't have much longer to live.

backgrounds

Margarete (Gretel) Sieveking b. Schaumann (born June 26, 1937 in Stuttgart) worked after graduating from high school as a student trainee in a Dortmund factory to finance her studies. She then studied linguistics at the University of Hamburg . There she met Ulrike Meinhof , who inspired her to pursue a career in journalism. After completing her master's degree, she worked for NDR television , where in 1965/66 she hosted her own television program “German for Germans with Margarete Schaumann” in the “course program” in front of the Tagesschau .

Malte Friedrich Sieveking (born April 28, 1940 in Hamburg) broke off his philosophy studies, then studied mathematics. He worked as a research assistant in Erlangen . Margarete Schaumann and Malte Sieveking married in 1966, but wanted to have an open marriage . During the Vietnam War they got involved in the Socialist German Student Union , which is why Malte Sieveking had to swap his assistantship in Germany for one in Switzerland, and the family moved to Zurich in 1969. Margarete Sieveking, who did not get a work permit there, got involved in the Revolutionary Organizational Organization Zurich (raz). She was in a relationship with Peter Niggli , the leader of the raz, and Malte also had countless affairs. Their marriage lasted because of their two daughters (* 1967 and * 1970).

After Malte Sieveking's contract expired in 1975 and the subsequent return to Bielefeld , the third child David was born in 1977. The family later moved to Bad Homburg , and Malte Sieveking was Professor of Stochastics and Mathematical Computer Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main until his retirement . Margarete Sieveking worked as a language teacher for German and gave private lessons in Spanish, she was politically active in the Greens . She first developed memory problems in 2005, and in 2008 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Margarete Sieveking died before the film was finished on February 27, 2012.

Awards

At the Locarno International Film Festival 2012, the director and producer of the film Forget mine not received the main prize of the Semaine de la Critique section . In 2012 he received the Hessian Film Prize for Best Documentary Film and was awarded the Goethe Institute Prize at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film.

In addition, the film was given the rating of particularly valuable by the German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) .

The German Film Academy nominated Vergiss mein nicht for the German Film Award 2013 in the category “Full-Program Documentary Films”.

Reviews

“With 'Forget Mine Not', David Sieveking has succeeded in creating an extraordinarily moving and artistically balanced film. [...] The film is a sensitively narrated homage by the filmmaker to his mother, who has Alzheimer's disease, who knows how to maintain the difficult balance between personal concern and artistic distance. This turns a very private story into a universal narrative about illness and death, love and responsibility. "

- DOK Leipzig, jury statement

“In it, director David Sieveking portrays his 73-year-old mother, who is suffering from dementia, with extreme sensitivity, in a balanced balance of closeness and distance. The sensitivity, the humor and the intensity that goes far beyond the individual case make the film an event and give hope for an award for the best film in the section. "

- dpa

“With 'Forget mine not', enthusiastically received by a visibly moved audience, Sieveking succeeds in an astonishing feat: A light, almost cheerful film not about the illness but about the life and love story of his parents - and the loving portrait of a person, whose self-image is fading. The dialogues are, you hardly dare to say, of disarming humor. [...] A film that could hardly be more tender. "

- Sebastian Handke : The daily mirror

“'Forget mine not' is without question a very sensitive, respectful film. Sieveking does not want to exploit his mother's slow death for sensationalist purposes, much more he wants to erect a memorial to her and writes her a touching love letter that has become a film. "

- Daniel Sander : Spiegel Online

literature

  • David Sieveking: Don't forget mine. How my mother lost her memory and I got to know my parents again. Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2012, ISBN 978-3-451-32574-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for forget mine not . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2012 (PDF; test number: 136 234 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Forget mine not . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b family CF. Petersen: Family tree of the Petersen and Sieveking family. ( MS Word ; 466 kB)
  4. ↑ F. Jasmin Böttger: N3 - A program between cultural mission and everyday media life. Origin and development of the third television program of the Nordkette NDR / SFB / RB 1960–1982. Pro Universate Verlag, Sinzheim 1994, ISBN 3-930747-07-3 , pp. 87 f.
  5. ↑ 65th Festival del film Locarno: Prize winners. ( Memento of October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 71 kB)
  6. ↑ Hessian Film Funding: Prize Winner Hessian Film and Cinema Prize 2012. ( Memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 78 kB)
  7. ↑ a b DOK-Archiv: Documentary Film Prize of the Goethe Institute 2012.
  8. ↑ German film and media rating: Don't forget mine. Film info and jury statement
  9. ↑ German Film Academy e. V .: Nominations for the German Film Prize 2013. ( Memento from July 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 76 kB)
  10. ↑ Germany is doing well at the Locarno Film Festival. on Zeit-Online from August 6, 2012
  11. ↑ Sebastian Handke: To live means to learn to forget. In: Der Tagesspiegel from August 13, 2012
  12. ↑ Daniel Sander: Alzheimer's documentary "Forget mine not". Farewell to me. on Spiegel Online from January 31, 2012