Anne Schramm

Mid-19th-century, Baltic Sea port city of Lubeck, Germany. Follows the fourth generation of the Buddenbrook mercantile family as Tony and Thomas reach the age of marriage. Fatefully impeded every step of the way, the Buddenbrooks struggle as economic hardship and personal defeats weigh down family relations.

When Bertha dies, her granddaughter Iris inherits her house and finds herself back in the home where she and her cousin used to play dressing-up in the summer holidays. While she wanders from room to room, she gropes her way through memories and things she had forgotten: What did her grandfather really do before he went to war? Which men were Bertha’s daughters in love with? Who ate his apple with the seeds?

In connection with Horst Wegener's new song "Werden", he and Arne Schramm made the short film "Schweigemahl" about experienced discrimination. Using expressive images of everyday racism, the film tells the story of a German family with a black mother and a white father who work as theatre actresses and directors - and their process of reflection on the fact that even in a family marked by diversity, subliminal and obvious racism is omnipresent. A call to acknowledge one's own racisms and to question the structural inequality that still persists.