BUMERANG

When the young West German Kurt arrives in Wrocław in his VW Beetle a mine from the war is being defused. He wants to photograph the house where his parents used to live. Now a Polish master mechanic and his daughter Ewa live there. The young German man and young Polish woman fall in love, even though the horrors of the Second World War are still present all around them. For Ewa's father, who lost part of his family in the war, this love affair is more than just a thorn in the side and the tattooed prisoner number on the forearm of a concentration camp survivor sitting next to Kurt at a party is more than just a reminder of German war crimes. Does a love "to Auschwitz" have a chance at success, or even a reason to exist?

This Nouvelle Vague style post-war drama represents a stocktaking of a historical crime, a whole spectrum of national political sensitivities and stereotypes captured in black and white and, at the same time, an exciting and fresh love story which, like no other film of the time, provided a nuanced reflection on post-war German-Polish relations. Wrocław's German past is openly addressed, as a cosmopolitan West German evolves into an identification figure who gets caught up in the emotional wheels of history. KM