CHILDREN. AS TIME FLIES.

Director's Statement

How do they live?
One of the white kerosene tanks on the expansive, empty grounds of the new refinery is emblazoned with big letters that spell TOTAL.
At night when lights illuminate the rooms beyond the windows of a residential block in the nearby Neustadt district of Halle, you can see people going about their lives. One of those people is Jeanette.
She's 24 years old, unemployed and re-training, but alone.
Her children Tommy, aged 8, and Paul, aged 3, sleep next door.
Jeanette studies photos of her children.
Jeanette dreams of becoming a bus driver.

We fast-forward to the future – now the present.
Jeanette has a third child, Annabelle, and is together with Guido.
Jeanette and Guido are both bus drivers. At 15, Tommy is the same age his mother was when she got pregnant with him in her ninth year at school. He sits in a classroom in front of his teacher. He wants to apply to stay on at school although he doesn't know why. "I'll think of something," he says.

Jeanette's mother Ingrid is a housewife. Her father works shifts on the refinery grounds. Now his daughter Jeanette and four sons have left home. Only the youngest, Tino, aged 18, is still at home. Father and son don't speak to one another. Tino is training to become a warehouse clerk and wants to be a Nazi. Tino also wants to be understood. Tino and Tommy celebrate New Year.

Paul, aged 10, Jeanette's second son has got his school recommendation. He could go to grammar school but he doesn't want to. He shoots a goal against the sports club formerly known as SC LEUNA, and now TOTAL.
Jeanette drives through the landscape.

Following STAU in 1992 and NEUSTADT in 1999, CHILDREN. AS TIME FLIES. is my third film about people in Saxony Anhalt. An overpainting.