A visit to the place of one’s childhood, where love and hope seem to have made off long ago and mining parades, booze-ups and helpless adolescent rebellion with techno music around the campfire have become ritualized. With an unerring gift for observation and structure, Fidel Sievering and Bennet Staack convey the worn-out quality and smell of a Rhenish town that used to live on mining and where successful structural change refuses to move in. Here, time stood still a long time ago. The people move awkwardly through the narrow streets and corridors, like digital puppets with glitchy motor functions. The only ray of light is the old, discarded plans for the future of the place that are unearthed from a sealed mineshaft as a test of courage. Working with sometimes off-kilter scenes and sounds, found audio-testimonies and an uncompromising digital design, “Glaube, Sitte, Heimat” speaks honestly about decorative wall plates and suppressed pain, but also about an unshakeable belief in the “New Dream”.

André Eckardt