Manfred Wilhelms

A small-town girl goes to the Berlinale.

In 1999, Manfred Wilhelms met the then 82-year-old photographer Henry Ries in front of the Brandenburg Gate, where he—carrying a box full of photos of Berlin—was looking for traces of old Berlin and finding construction sites everywhere. This encounter gave rise to “Henry Ries – The Flâneur of Berlin,” a narrative about two cities.

Documentary film.

No synopsis available yet.

A documentary film that, through a six-year long-term observation, reflects the redesign and structural changes at Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz—which has regained its central role since reunification—while also seeking to bring its past and history to life.

This film takes a look at Berlin's development towards becoming a metropolis. It reveals a city in transition, a work-in-progress; it pauses to examine all kinds of architecture, bot old and new and to meet the city's inhabitants, users and planners. At the film's centre, however, is the building and planning currently taking place at the city's central axes: Potsdamer Platz, the Spreebogen, Friedrichstadt, Spreeinsel and Alexanderplatz. The camera, representing the eye of the narrator, leads the viewer through the various architectural sets of Berlin as if guiding us among the pictures of an exhibition.