Mittagsstunde
Mittagsstunde is the film adaptation of the bestseller of the same name by Dörte Hansen. It is a story about the people in the north of Germany, who may be taciturn but know how to take care of each other when the going gets rough. With an air of subtle melancholy, director Lars Jessen tells the story of the decline of the village culture, which is always accompanied by the underlying question of who we want to be in the future, and where we belong.
Ingwer, 47 years old, decides to take a sabbatical, turns his back on the city and returns to his home village of Brinkebüll, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in North Frisia. However, his childhood home has become almost unrecognisable: There are hardly any people out and about on the streets, as life happens elsewhere now. No village school, no village shop, no old chestnut tree in the village square, no storks, the only crop grown on the fields is maize. A whole world seems to have sunk without a trace. When did this decline start? When the birds disappeared in consequence of the consolidation of the local farmland? When the large farms grew ever larger, and the small farms failed to survive? When Ingwer left to go to university in Kiel, and his parents had to cope on their own with running the village pub? When did the extended lunchtime break with all of the wonderful promises and secrets it harboured disappear?
After the film, the author Dörte Hansen, its director and producer Lars Jessen and Hans-Günter Henneke, the executive director of the presidial board of the German County Association, will discuss the film with Dieter Kosslick, and talk about what has been lost, and above all, however, about how to revive the once thriving rural culture and communities.
Dörte Hansen was born and still lives in the small town of Husum. She worked as a freelance journalist for radio and print media, and was also the culture editor of the radio programme NDR Info. In 2015, she published her first novel, Altes Land, which became an instant bestseller, just like her second novel Mittagsstunde. The TV channel ZDF produced a hugely popular two-part drama based on Altes Land. Her new novel Zur See will be published in the autumn of 2022.
Lars Jessen, who was born in Kiel, is one of Germany‘s most versatile and productive film-makers. He directed TV documentaries and episodes of popular TV crime series such as Großstadtrevier or Die Wache before his first cinema film in 2005, Am Tag als Bobby Ewing starb. Some of his other films, such as Fraktus and Für immer Sommer 90, were also very successful. He also continues to work in TV, directing episodes of crime series such as Tatort, Mord mit Aussicht, Polizeiruf 110 and many others.
Hans-Günter Henneke, born in Bassum in Lower Saxony, is one of the executive directors of the presidial board of the German County Association. Before this, he was a member of the Landkreis Diepholz county council. He has lectured as an honorary professor at Osnabrück University since 1996. His work focuses primarily on the development and survival of rural communities. In this context, he was the chairman of the German government‘s Advisory Council on Rural Development from 2015 to 2021. Hans-Günter Henneke was also, and still is, a member of numerous other government as well as local community committees. In parallel, he deputised for the president of the German Savings Banks Association, and was also a member of public TV channel ZDF‘s board of governors. He has written numerous works about public law, public and administrative law teaching and public finances.
Dieter Kosslick was born in Pforzheim and was speechwriter to Hamburg‘s executive mayor Hans-Ulrich Klose before he became the press officer for the office for women and equality. After that, he edited the magazine Konkret, was the managing director of the Hamburg film office, chaired the film funding institution Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, and was the director of the Berlinale film festival from 2001 to 2019. He is the chair of the Carl Laemmle Producers Award jury, and a member of public TV channel ZDF‘s board.
