Opening at Delphi Filmpalast:
Kantstraße 12A • Berlin-Charlottenburg
18.10. - 9.11.2025
Film Series at Zeughauskino:
Hinter dem Gießhaus 3 • Berlin-Mitte
FRI 24.10. at 8 pm
СРЕДА – 19.7.1961
Directed by Victor Kossakovsky
1997 93 min Rus - German subs
SUN 09.11. at 12 pm
DAMENWAHL
1999 80 min Ger - English subs
Büro für Dramaturgie, in cooperation with the Zeughauskino of the German Historical Museum, presents six films in newly restored versions in which Viola Stephan mapped the upheavals of the 1990s.
Viola Stephan’s films trace exploratory movements that repeatedly lead into the East as it opened up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, investigating the reordering of geopolitical certainties. With curiosity and an attentive focus on people and their individual worlds of experience, the films explore a region that had previously been inaccessible and portray a world in transformation.
Viola Stephan’s films trace exploratory movements that repeatedly lead into the East as it opened up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, investigating the reordering of geopolitical certainties. With curiosity and an attentive focus on people and their individual worlds of experience, the films explore a region that had previously been inaccessible and portray a world in transformation.
The retrospective Zwischenzeit / Interim – The 1990s in the Films of Viola Stephan, curated by Vivien Buchhorn, is funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (Hauptstadtkulturfonds). Cooperation partners include the Zeughauskino, the Delphi Filmpalast, the Stadtmuseum Berlin, and SREDA FILM GmbH.
The digital restorations were supported by the FFE Filmerbe program. Producer Jana Cisar accompanied the concept development and archival research, with technical responsibility carried out by PHAROS – The Post Group.
The digital restorations were supported by the FFE Filmerbe program. Producer Jana Cisar accompanied the concept development and archival research, with technical responsibility carried out by PHAROS – The Post Group.
1989 -1991
THE JOURNEY FROM PETERSBURG TO MOSCOW
Путешествие из Петербурга в Москву
116 min, 35mm, 4K digitization
Director/Co-Production: Viola Stephan
Cinematography: Pavel Lebeshev
Music: Peter Gordon
Zeughauskino Screenings:
Hinter dem Gießhaus 3 • Berlin-Mitte
The idea for The Journey from Petersburg to Moscow stems from Alexander Radishchev’s 1790 novel of the same name—a literary protest against oppression. Branded dangerous, Radishchev was first sentenced to death by Catherine II and later exiled to Siberia. In the Soviet Union, his critique of tsarist conditions was embraced as a foundation for socialist thought.
Two centuries later, just months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Viola Stephan retraced the route with a small team. For her, the journey became a shift in perspective and a meditation on time itself. Encounters unfold slowly: a woman steps outside to lament her hardship while searching for butter; others share fears, speak of family, chance, or their view of Gorbachev.
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Stephan assembles these fragments into a mosaic of society between dance clubs, cadet schools, and choirs—immersing viewers in small-town life and conversations that reveal the lived consequences of political and economic change.
It is March 1991
Stephan assembles these fragments into a mosaic of society between dance clubs, cadet schools, and choirs—immersing viewers in small-town life and conversations that reveal the lived consequences of political and economic change.
1991 -1992
WAR´S END
КОНЕЦ ВОЙНЫ
90 min, 35mm, 4K digitization
Director/Producer: Viola Stephan
Cinematography: Pavel Lebeshev
Opening at Delphi Filmpalast:
Kantstraße 12A • Berlin-Charlottenburg
Zeughauskino Screening:
Hinter dem Gießhaus 3 • Berlin-MitteTUE 21.10. at 7 pm
1992 93 min Ger/Rus - German subs
In cooperation with the Stadtmuseum Berlin, the series opens on 14.10. at the Delphi Filmpalast as part of HEUTE NOCH MORGEN SCHON – Filmische Perspektiven auf Berlin um 1990. At the Nikolaikirche, KRIEGSENDE (excerpts) is presented as an installation alongside other films.
In the 1920s, Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiayev described Berlin as both the westernmost city of the East and the easternmost city of the West. Historically the first stop for Russians heading westward, Berlin has long been a city of passage: open, restless, and home to outsiders. After the Cold War, Russian voices again resonate in the streets, as if the East had shifted closer.
War’s End explores how Berlin copes with changing historical conditions after the fall of the Wall—the third such aftermath of war in the 20th century. The film portrays those arriving, those settling, and those leaving, tracing disruptions in a scarred city.
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Shot between October 1991 and March 1992, the film spans Berlin’s eastern and western districts, Potsdam’s Soviet garrison, the Wünsdorf–Brest military train, and borderlands at Brest and Kienitz. With Russian and German perspectives, it investigates the layered presence of Russians in Berlin—soldiers, emigrants, and refugees.
© Wolfgang Widmer
Shot between October 1991 and March 1992, the film spans Berlin’s eastern and western districts, Potsdam’s Soviet garrison, the Wünsdorf–Brest military train, and borderlands at Brest and Kienitz. With Russian and German perspectives, it investigates the layered presence of Russians in Berlin—soldiers, emigrants, and refugees.
1992 -1994
SILESIA
ŚLĄSK / SCHLESIEN
80 min, 35mm, 4K digitization
Director/Producer: Viola Stephan
Cinematography: Bogdan Dziworski, Victor Kossakovsky
Zeughauskino Screenings:
Hinter dem Gießhaus 3 • Berlin-Mitte
SAT 18.10. at 7 pm
Filmed in 1993/94, Slask / Silesia offers a cinematic portrait of Lower Silesia after the Cold War and the opening of the borders. Without historical revisionism, the film observes Poles and Germans in their present-day realities of post-communist Poland.
Shot in Milków at the foot of the Giant Mountains, as well as in Kamienna Góra (formerly Landeshut) and Wałbrzych (formerly Waldenburg), the documentary reflects on a region once marked by its own distinct character. Long absent from both Polish and German consciousness, Silesia survived only as a “lost land” in memory and in idealized stories of refugees and expellees.
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Viola Stephan’s film does not revisit borders but encounters those who remained and those who arrived after the war. Traditions—miners’ brass bands, choirs, church gatherings—persist without nationalist framing. The film finds poetry in the pragmatic moment, portraying abandoned sites, landscapes, and everyday life—eating, music, dancing, mourning—in a Polish-German borderland.
Viola Stephan’s film does not revisit borders but encounters those who remained and those who arrived after the war. Traditions—miners’ brass bands, choirs, church gatherings—persist without nationalist framing. The film finds poetry in the pragmatic moment, portraying abandoned sites, landscapes, and everyday life—eating, music, dancing, mourning—in a Polish-German borderland.