"Biermann": documentary on the singer-songwriter opens in cinemas Thursday
Jens Meurer portrays the poet and singer expelled from East Germany in 1976 – with archive footage, Stasi recordings, around 30 songs and encounters with Nina Hagen and Joachim Gauck.
Archive image · Photo: Harald Krichel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The documentary "Biermann", about singer-songwriter and poet Wolf Biermann, opens in German cinemas on Thursday, Oct. 29. It is directed by Jens Meurer and distributed by Majestic. The film runs 120 minutes and, according to Filmdienst, carries no age restriction, with an educational recommendation of 14 and up.
According to Filmdienst, the film is largely chronological: from Biermann's childhood in Hamburg – his father was murdered in Auschwitz – through his years in East Germany to the 1976 Cologne concert and his expulsion while on tour in the West. Meurer combines concert and lecture footage, archive material, family photos, TV interviews and Stasi surveillance films with around 30 songs. Biermann meets, among others, musician Lina Maly, Wolfgang Niedecken, Joachim Gauck and his foster daughter Nina Hagen.
Filmdienst critic Reinhard Kleber praises the varied material and the sympathetic portrait but says Biermann's more than 50 years in the West and his later work get too little attention; Filmdienst rates the film "worth discussing". Filmstarts editors give it 4 out of 5.