Conversation between Dirk Fleiter, freelance journalist at WDR, and director Irina Heckmann

Dirk Fleiter: „Between The Lines“ is already your fourth film. What were your previous films about?

Irina Heckmann: In „At the End of All Days“, which I shot in 2012, I followed people through their everyday evening rituals—including sleeping, dreaming, and waking up. As the title suggests, the night, fear, and death play important roles in it. (Film review by Reinhard Matern in the “der Freitag” community)

„The Most Ingenious System“, which I completed in 2014, deals with human anatomy. I used to study illustration and would go to the university’s anatomy department to draw—a packed hall containing 25 donated bodies, meaning dissected corpses on tables, with swarms of students learning from them. While drawing a tendon in a hand, I had a moment of revelation; I suddenly realized the perfect, harmonious order in which the human body functions down to the smallest detail—this truly perfect organism. Artists like da Vinci, the doctors I spoke with, and the preparators—I filmed the latter at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf—have all experienced something similar. Unfortunately, the film cannot be viewed anywhere, as online age restrictions (specifically the “18+” rating) are not particularly effective.

„Family Life“ — a film I released in 2017—portrays three generations of my family: my grandmother, my parents, and my siblings. In the film, I explored the question: What holds a family together? What are the bonds that unite them? Everyday life—the rhythm of daily existence—plays a central role, alongside life experiences and the question of life’s meaning.

Dirk Fleiter: Let’s turn to your new film, Between The Lines. How did you come up with the idea of ​​accompanying a tour group to Russia?

Irina Heckmann: Out of curiosity. I asked myself: Who are the people who travel to Russia, and why do they go? What are their goals? I wondered how people who were once enemies interact decades later. After all, Russia isn’t exactly a typical holiday destination for Germans. My friend—who handled the sound for the film—had been studying Russian for two years at the time and wanted to go to Russia to improve his language skills. He showed me the link to the trip announcement, and without giving it much thought, we signed up for two seats on the bus. I was interested in Russia’s western regions anyway, as well as the areas bordering the Baltic states and Belarus. I had never been to St. Petersburg or Volgograd. I had visited Moscow once before, but that was it. For instance, I knew that combat had taken place in these regions during World War II, but I hadn’t realized just how deeply they were shaped by that history. My family has a different story. The Germans from Russia didn’t fight in the war. Under Stalin, they were suddenly branded as fascists, deported, and forced into labor in “labor armies.”

Dirk Fleiter: Could you elaborate on that a bit? What is your specific connection to Russia?

Irina Heckmann: I belonged to the German minority in Russia. They were recruited by Catherine the Great in the late 17th century to settle uninhabited areas of Russia. They lived there for generations. My great-great-grandfather was from Baden-Württemberg; he came to Russia in the late 18th century. There are still many Germans in Russia—just under 400,000, I believe—mostly in Siberia, in the Omsk Oblast, which is where I am from as well.

Dirk Fleiter: You chose to satisfy your curiosity through the medium of film. How would you describe the cinematic approach you took for this project? Were there any models or traditions that guided you?

Irina Heckmann: I was guided by questions such as: What goals do the travelers have, and do they achieve them by the end of the journey or not? That was the initial narrative arc. My attitude was to approach people openly, with an unbiased gaze. I often positioned myself with the camera at the periphery of the group and the main action. The stories often found their way to us on their own.

Dirk Fleiter: Recurring elements in the film include historical photographs and diary entries from a German soldier during World War II, read in voiceover. What was the idea behind this?

Irina Heckmann: I first heard Wolfgang Buff’s story at a military cemetery. He kept a diary, and in it, I found expressions of affection and compassion for the local population and the Soviet soldiers. Buff studied Russian diligently; he was well-read and evidently fearless, as he criticized the Hitler regime in several passages—sending the diaries home to his parents via military mail all the while. As you read further into his diary, you observe a shift in his attitude toward the country and its people. He had come to Russia to defeat the enemy; like many at the time, he was a patriot. Then I read how, in the midst of battle, he stepped into the line of enemy fire to tend to a wounded Soviet soldier. That is unusual. Essentially, I wanted to encourage the viewer to reflect on this attitude of the soldier Wolfgang Buff. Such people—or such human acts—did exist amidst the daily reality of war. Once I was back home, I was able to visit his younger brother, Joachim Buff, who had also served as a soldier in Russia. Sadly, he has since passed away. Dirk Fleiter: Were the stops along the route planned in advance?

Irina Heckmann: We did have a list of stops, but we had no idea what to expect or who we might meet. We were essentially heading into the unknown, into the open.

Dirk Fleiter: Who organized the trip?

Irina Heckmann: There were two organizers who launched the call for the trip under the motto “Peace and Friendship.” I don’t know exactly how all the meeting points came about, as much of it happened through the personal initiative of the guests and the locals. For example, the visit to the village of Utorgosh—the first location in the film featuring the local history museum—was organized by a German man and his Russian wife, who was from that area. They approached the people in Utorgosh, and the locals took the initiative to plan the reception and organize food and accommodation. Our only real task was to find a way to get there.

Dirk Fleiter: How many people took part?

Irina Heckmann: There were between 150 and 250 participants on each of the three trips. Most drove their own cars, but there were also motorcyclists and one or two buses.

Dirk Fleiter: The trip participants weren’t a homogeneous group; they certainly had diverse motivations. Why didn’t people travel to Russia on their own instead of in a large group?

Irina Heckmann: Older people who had been personally affected by the Second World War—or whose families had been—didn’t dare make the trip alone. Many wanted to make a statement. Over the preceding years, they had followed the political tensions between Russia and Germany in the media; they found the situation unsettling and feared the conflict would escalate—spreading across all of Europe. And they weren’t entirely wrong, given that Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022. Back in 2017, the conflict in eastern Ukraine had already been going on for three years; sanctions against Russia were in full swing, and media sentiment on all sides was heated.

Dirk Fleiter: How did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 affect the film?

Irina Heckmann: I was in the middle of editing. I couldn’t work on the film for a while; I had to reshuffle the deck and take a clear stance—otherwise, the film wouldn’t have worked. But first and foremost, I was occupied with processing the shock this war triggered in me. I mean, we were all in shock. I observed how biased my initial reaction to the war was.

Dirk Fleiter: What do you mean by that?

Irina Heckmann: Lines were quickly drawn, and I felt as though old images of the enemy were resurfacing. When the war broke out, for instance, an older acquaintance of mine confronted me quite loudly on the street: “The Russians have gone mad!” A neighbor recalled the Cold War era of the 70s: “The Russians are going to drop an atom bomb on us!” While I could understand their agitation in that moment, I felt uncomfortable—almost under attack myself. I can imagine that, in a state of shock, one falls back on familiar, formative images—images one knows well—in an attempt to escape the mental chaos as quickly as possible. At least, that was my experience. Initially, I thought Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was a misunderstanding—that the soldiers would be back home in a few days. And yet, I had lived through the Second Chechen War and seen a friend come home in a coffin. Of course, Russia is my homeland, and I feel at home there—above all, through the language. So, I found myself torn.

Dirk Fleiter: People in Russia cheered for the war. Even though much of that was staged propaganda, there are many people in Russia who support Putin. Can you explain that?

Irina Heckmann: People are susceptible to propaganda. German history—the Hitler era—demonstrated this. If one asks where the Russian population’s readiness for war came from, it is important to know that the conflict in eastern Ukraine—which began in 2014, eight years before Russia attacked Ukraine—was constantly featured in Russian state media. From a Russian perspective, of course.

Dirk Fleiter: What is your stance, and how did you want to express it in the film?

Irina Heckmann: I positioned myself clearly in the middle. I make no distinction regarding whether soldiers on the Ukrainian or Russian side are dying every day; I grieve with both sides. In his work, Leo Tolstoy incorporated excerpts from the American Adin Ballou—an advocate of the doctrine of non-resistance—who posed the question: “How many people are needed to transform evil into justice?” I quote him: “A person must not kill. If he has killed, he is a criminal, a murderer. Two, ten, a hundred people—if they do it, they are murderers. If two, ten, a hundred people do the same thing, they are murderers. Yet the state, or a people, may kill as much as it pleases, and that is not murder; that is a good, praiseworthy deed. One need only gather as many people as possible, and the mutual slaughter of 10,000 becomes an innocent act.”

Dirk Fleiter: Did you receive any film funding or sponsorship for the film?

Irina Heckmann: The film was self-funded; we didn’t receive any grants. You can picture filming abroad on a shoestring budget like this: we lived on instant soups and Russian sauerkraut dumplings. We were dependent on the bus—lacking the necessary mobility—which influenced our entire approach to filming. Sometimes, the participants we were following would get off the bus or want to stay longer in a particular place. We’d lose track of them or only meet up with them again at the end of the journey. There were many official encounters, but I was more interested in the private moments. Even that often happened only in snatches, because the stops were brief and we couldn’t stay longer since the bus had to move on. Not to mention the difficulty of filming with so many people in the first place. Documentary filmmaking requires time—time to get close to people and build a rapport. That was the biggest challenge during the shoot. Ultimately, this meant we financed the entire production at our own risk—a business risk, really, with no guarantee the film would ever recoup even a fraction of its production costs. On top of that, the editing process took an immense amount of time, all while juggling other freelance work and family life with a small child.

Dirk Fleiter: Despite all the obstacles, you did manage to finish the film. How would you describe the outcome of your cinematic quest in terms of content? Can you sum up what you’ve taken away from the experience?

Irina Heckmann: For me, this film was a search for a form and a working method—one that pushed me to my limits. Moving forward, I want to work in a more subjective, essayistic style and rely less on external circumstances that I have little or no control over. If you are asking for a kind of summary, I personally think of the concentration camp inmate Viktor E. Frankl—an Austrian neurologist and psychologist—who, in his text “Synchronization in Birkenwald,” speaks of a chain of violence that must be broken; otherwise, the violence will never end. My grandmother broke that chain of violence. She survived several camps, yet when the war ended, she did not answer violence with violence or hate with hate. She blamed no one for what she had endured. She once recounted how, after chopping wood at the end of a long workday in the camp—in temperatures of minus 30 degrees—they would march in a column back to their barracks. The local population knew that these prisoners were “fascists”—especially since they were German women who spoke no Russian, or only a few snatches of the language. And yet, on that particular day, a man standing beside the passing column slipped her a small piece of bread. There were several similar incidents, even though the Russians themselves had nothing to eat, my grandmother said. Personally, I do not want to be a link in that chain—not even by a single millimeter. That is something I have come to realize. I handle news carefully, because it affects me deeply. And I choose my words with care when it comes to taking a stand. You asked me earlier about role models. They did exist. During the difficult phases of editing the film, I was guided by a quote from the Russian philosopher Alexei Losev—the subject of Viktor Kossakovsky’s first film. The quote appeared in a sort of testament that his wife read aloud after his death. He wrote that he had always been assured there were only facts—nothing but facts—and that facts were stubborn things. That was nonsense, he argued. There is nothing more deceptive than facts. There is only community, and love is a part of that community.

Witten, January 2024