TAMARA

Tamara comes from a native nowhere: growing up in the provinces of East Germany on the ruins of a country that no longer exists. When she returns briefly, her parents are celebrating their farewell party. They have become late victims of the peaceful revolution of the GDR and reunification with West Germany and this time’s mindset of “return before compensation” and have to give up their house. But it gets even worse: Just as Tamara begins to build a relationship with her father again – an amateur astronomer and chronicler of the reunion – he dies in a car accident. Still paralyzed by grief, Tamara gradually learns the reasons for her mother's silence, the academic's emotional scars after unemployment and retraining as a cemetery gardener. Director Jonas Ludwig Walter tells the story of East German biographies and their disruptions from the perspective of someone born in 1990. In a deeply divided place of those who have lost and those who benefited from the reunification, Tamara uncovers explosive secrets that also affect her. Between old and new family ties, past and future, she must redefine her identity.

Text: Kira Taszman