MFDB

Storyline

Czernowitz, a remote city in central Europe. Once it was the capital of the royal Bukovina province and part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Its people were of different nationalities, spoke different languages, practiced different cultures: Ukrainians, Romanians, Germans, Poles and Huzuls. At one time, nearly half of Czernowitz’s 150,000 inhabitants were Jewish. Southern Bukovina now belongs to Romania, the north – including Czernowitz, now called Chernivtsi – to Ukraine. Six years ago, Volker Koepp shot the film Mr Zwilling and Ms Zuckermann there. Rosa Roth- Zuckermann and Mathias Zwilling were two of the last Jews born in the old Czernowitz, who had survived the war and the camps of the Transnistria and had remained in their city. The Jews who fled Bukovina over the course of the last century have sought exile in many parts of the world. The memories of the people, lives and landscapes they left behind still affect their families. The film THIS YEAR IN CZERNOWITZ takes émigrés and their descendents back there. Cellist Eduard Weissman sets off from Berlin, sisters Evelyne Mayer and Katja Rainer travel from Vienna, actor Harvey Keitel and writer Norman Manea from New York. The journey to the mythical places of their origins takes them not only back into the past but also into the present, to the people who live in Czernowitz today, to the Ukrainian student Tanya and the nearly 90-year-old German Johann Schlamp.

Festivals & Academy awards and others

Berlin International Film Festival 2004
Forum