This film has been nominated for the Audience Award endowed with 1,000 euro. Please vote after watching the movie.
You can find an overview of all nominated films here.

The conceptual rigidity of Adamczewski’s film recalls the formal experiments of structural film in the 1970s. The care with which the film-maker handles her material has become rare in the digital age and for this reason deserves special attention. The tight cinematic framework into which Adamczewski forces the vigour of her research makes this film an extremely intense experience. It is the product of a generation determined to resist the right-wing movement in German society.

In quiet shots, Adamczewski shows us former ›wild concentration camps‹ that were set up in Saxony, a former »stronghold of the labour movement«. »The spontaneously occupied community centres, workers’ sports clubs, barracks and factory buildings still exist today. Some are now restaurants, discount stores or simply fallow land, which seem harmless and interchangeable. […] Accompanying the film footage, which visualises present-day Saxony, the off-screen voice quotes various sources: administrative measures such as house searches, arrests, interrogations and confiscations, but also reports from former prisoners, newspaper articles and literary texts.« (Ute Adamczewski)

As the title suggests, Status and Terrain is an attempt to demonstrate the mechanisms that enabled the Nazis to seize power. Language (status) and architecture (terrain) are two key apparatuses that are examined in an attempt to understand the outbreak of violence at that time and draw conclusions for today.

Awards for ›Zustand und Gelände‹

First Film Prize – FIDMarseille 2019 | Golden Dove German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film – DOK Leipzig 2019 | ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness – DOK Leipzig 2019