80 Years of the End of the War in the West

During this time, people like Elisabeth Wilms, a baker's wife from Dortmund, and Friedrich Lieffertz, a restaurateur from Cologne, became chroniclers. They record the last days of the war with their cameras. The documentary by Franziska Rempe and Lukas Hoffmann begins with this so-called “zero hour”. Life gradually returns to the cities on the Rhine and Ruhr. And all over Europe, thousands are now making their way back home.

Previously unpublished archive material from amateur filmmakers and photographers shows the difficult path from the shadows of the post-war years from 1945 to 1948 back into the light. Among other things, the film tells the story of the Camilla Mayer troupe, from whose ranks an artist balanced on a tightrope high above Cologne's Heumarkt. The film shows images of the carnival, which was celebrated again shortly after the war - and which expressed the fact that people were simply happy to have survived the war.

“80 Years of the End of the War in the West - Between Ruins and Hope” takes us on a journey into the everyday lives of people in the post-war period. Unusual and private insights into a life in ruins, characterized by hunger and deprivation, but also by hope and the thirst for life.