Fräulein Schmetterling

More than fifty years ago Christa and Gerhard Wolf wrote the story of 18-year-old Helene and her younger sister Asta, both of whom end up under the guidance of a state welfare worker following their father's death. This "Frau Fertig" plans every detail in advance, inclusive of school, job and leisure time. Director Kurt Barthel produced what was a poetic contemporary fairy tale about the life sentiments of young people, their attempts at escaping established modes of being and dreams of happiness: employing a mixture of action, everyday documentary-like scenes and dream sequences he daringly undertook a stylistic experiment, combining realism with pantomime and poetry. After the 11th plenary session of the SED in December 1965 however, to which almost the entire annual production of DEFA films fell victim, work on “Miss Butterfly” was strictly halted. All materials went into the archives, some were subsequently lost. In 2020 the DEFA Foundation decided to reconstruct a "completed" film on the basis of the remaining available records.