with an introduction by Fatme Hawarin

After a decade at DEFA’s documentary studios, Helke Misselwitz makes her narrative debut with the fairytale ‘Herzsprung’. She situates her romance within the post-reunification pall that hangs over the titular East German village: goose feathers drift like snow through the kitchens of defunct factories; Eva-Maria Hagen still sings her melancholic folk songs. Russian soldiers withdraw, leaving behind little more than the echo of rhapsodic disco tunes, as businesses shutter and the villagers drift into quiet despair.

Johanna, a young cook, first loses her job, then her husband. She dyes her hair red, steps into red shoes, boards a red train carriage – red for love, and then for blood. One evening, she meets a foreign ‘stranger’, a man entangled in obscure dealings. After he sells his bicycle, she offers him a lift to the station. He returns, stubbornly searching for her throughout Herzsprung, taking work at a highway snackbar in order to stay close.

Their tentative romance unfolds amid mounting hostility, its most violent expression found in the relentless attacks of a leather-clad gang of right-wing bikers. Misselwitz would later describe the bittersweet nature of her fairytale, “that one’s heart can leap with both joy and with sorrow.” 

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