Reife Kirschen

The seldom-screened DEFA film REIFE KIRSCHEN (Horst Seemann, 1972) features Günther Simon in his final role and tells the story of a working-class family navigating everyday occurrences and decisions. A married couple (Günther Simon, Helga Raumer) whose unmarried daughter (Traudl Kulikowsky) still lives at home with her child are themselves confronted with big changes when the husband is asked to leave behind his home and family in Thuringia so that he and his brigade can help build a nuclear power station in the north. East Germany audiences enjoyed this deeply felt and strikingly conformist film by Horst Seemann, who liked to show his protagonists dealing with exceptional emotional situations. With a deliberate eye on fate, his characters move within the precisely depicted social microclimate of a then-contemporary working-class family. This dramatic, emotional depiction stood in stark contrast to the dominant documentary realism of the time. (Stefanie Eckert)