Germany, Pale Mother

Deutschland bleiche Mutter (Germany, Pale Mother), whose title comes from a poem by Berthold Brecht, has its roots in the memories that Sanders-Brahms kept of her own mother during the Nazi period and the period just after the war. She interweaves the collective history of a country in ruins, ravaged by Nazism, and the personal history of her mother. She explores the darkest period in her country's history, which is also the period which gave birth to her. "My story is the story of a conflict between Mother Germany, the country I was born in, spreading war throughout Europe, and a woman I love, my mother, Lene, who lived through this period with extraordinary courage". She builds up the film editing together totally scripted fictional scenes and documentary footage appearing like a leitmotiv. "I understood that it was the war, the war that I saw in the first years of my life, that these were the images that sometimes surfaced in my dreams and that I have tried to control by making this film" (Helma Sanders-Brahms).