

Learning to Milk a Cow
To Bavaria and back in search of heritage lost.
A daring documentary delving into the experiences of a Ukrainian forced labourer in Germany during World War II, exploring themes of love, loss, and profound longing. When the filmmaker’s grandmother was 19, she was taken from Soviet Ukraine to Germany to work on a Bavarian farm under National Socialism. She had the luck and perseverance to survive the hardships of the forced famine in her homeland and forced labour in the new one. The stories of her everyday life – learning how to milk a cow, and falling in love – are interspersed with three generations of reflections on politics, longing, feelings of displacement and loss. Hand-processed black & white film, colour film, photographs and official documents create a montage of different perspectives. The hand-touch aesthetic combines with the acousmatic effect of disembodied voices, in this deeply intimate portrait obscured by memory loss, mistranslation, fear and trauma.
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- Status
- Released
- Budget
- —
- Box office
- —
- Language
- German
- forced labour
- memory
Top billed cast
Behind the camera
Director
Produced in
Canada, Germany
Where to watch
All optionsAvailability for Germany. Provided by JustWatch through the TMDB API.
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Release dates
GermanyDE
- Premiere1 Jan 2016
Frequently asked questions
Learning to Milk a Cow was released on 1 January 2016.
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