Into the unknown

A cinematic documentary about people between worlds
Is it not a hopeful sign refugees are warmly welcomed in Germany? Will the beautiful vision of a global village become true, with people peacefully living together regardless of nationality, class or religion - at least for the time being? With rapid changes currently taking place, nobody really knows where this journey will take us all. In uncertain times like ours it is worth listening to people who have undergone similar experiences. People like these are given a voice in “Into the Unknown.” They are members of a German-Russian artist group who come together in the Salon Theatre Taunusstein to rehearse Erich Maria Remarque‛s melodrama “The Night in Lisbon.”
In his new film, established director Inigo Westmeier (award-winning kung-fu documentary “Dragon Girl”, 2012) focuses on his actors‛ lives between two worlds, the German and the Russian one. During intensive rehearsals and in numerous interviews, cast and team try to find answers to the same question that haunts and drives Helen, the play‛s main character, who is constantly running away from herself:
Where is home?
Helen‛s feelings of being homeless, homesick and lonely are the Russian-German actors‛ very own ones. Thus they serve as an ideal basis for staging the play in a particularly true way.
Yet not everyone feels at ease with this ambiguous approach, private and professional matters inevitably mixing. The viewer experiences first-hand how different interpretations of the play‛s
characters result in personal conflicts. The challenging, at times manipulative directing of Mikhail Levitins who in his main job is the artistic director of the Hermitage Museum in Moscow exacerbates
those conflicts.
In art as in life, Westmeier with his actors embarks on a journey searching for a piece of what can be called “home.” Filmed with a sensitive eye, he repeatedly finds impressive, personal, subjective
images on that journey. With Westmeier subtly blending documentary and theatrical performance, film and documentary sequences complement and enrich each other. With this unusual artistic approach, Westmeier succeeds in capturing what is said between the lines, showing what cannot be put into words. Here, the film is truly cinematic. It is true to the director‛s goal, to use his own words: “Authenticity and emotionality without distraction.”
A hard, emotional time marked by existential thoughts on love and violence, the search for one‛s identity, displacement and loss culminates in a successful performance and Viktoria Alexander the
Russian-born artistic director‛s consoling realisation: “My home is my husband.” The fact that for most of her colleagues the search for something they can call “home” will go on is the underlying tragedy we as an audience come to realise. It is what the actors share with those thousands of uprooted people at present looking for a new home in this country. To convey this feeling to an audience is the quality that makes Inigo Westmeier‛s “Into the Unknown” so special.