Durchfahrtsland - Drive Through Country

DURCHFAHRTSLAND is a home movie about the foreign world just around the corner. It takes only 20 minutes by tram to get from Cologne Cathedral in the city center to a place that feels faceless. Sandwiched between Cologne and Bonn, this hilly landscape is neither city nor countryside. It is sprawling, faceless, interchangeable. Only at night, the eery glow of the oil refineries on the Rhine transform it into a dazzling scene. For the people who live there, however, this area is the center of their world where they are trying to make a home for themselves. This is not always easy, especially for the four protagonists of the film: Hans Wilhelm Dümmer, the pastor of two neighboring villages that have been enemies for centuries, is on a mission is to reconcile them. Sophia Rey is a self-published crime writer. But her new books go increasingly unnoticed in her own home village. Mark Basinsky, youngest member of a local bachelor club, dreams to study fashion design in Milan one day. And Giuseppe Scolaro, passionate first chairman of a marching band regrets to be born Italian rather than German. DURCHFAHRTSLAND accompanies the protagonists for a year and in the process draws a very personal portrait of a region that only appears utterly inconspicouos and provincial at first glance. The people who live her have preserved their rituals, myths and stories. They cultivate a defiant pride, while the dirt belts of the neighboring bigger and well-known cities keep encroaching on them.