Lives in Bavaria

What a beau­ti­ful doc­u­men­tary direc­tor Jan­na Ji Won­ders made. I’ve just seen it in the online ver­sion of Frank­furt based LICHTER film fes­ti­val. What is it about?

Jan­na Ji Won­ders tells the some­how ever­day sto­ry of the women in her fam­i­ly over four gen­er­a­tions. But it’s not only an every­day sto­ry. It tells much about so inter­st­ing and dif­fi­cult lives of women in 20^th cen­tu­ry. The film’s uni­fy­ing ele­ment and some­how a hid­den pro­tag­o­nist is the beau­ti­ful Lake Walchensee in Bavaria, where the fam­i­ly opened a café in 1920 which still exists today. The fam­i­ly matri­arch and café founder Apa, passed the busi­ness to her first-born daugh­ter Nor­ma who con­tin­ues to run it until the age of nine­ty. Norma’s daugh­ters Anna and Frauke leave this life to lib­er­ate them­selves and trav­el the world as musi­cians to Mex­i­co and many more places – and then returned to live in a com­mune in Munich. Frauke pines for the love of her life, dies mys­te­ri­ous­ly and becomes a shad­owy fig­ure for those left behind. Anna then moves to the USA, where she gives birth to a girl. Sum­moned by the shad­ows of her past, she returns with her daugh­ter Jan­na to Walchensee where Grand­ma Nor­ma becomes an impor­tant fig­ure for her grand­daugh­ter. Film­mak­er Jan­na is search­ing for answers to her own ques­tions: What is the mean­ing of home? To what extent am I defined by all those women? What real­ly counts in the end? She finds the clues in the bond between these four gen­er­a­tions of women and their very dif­fer­ent approach­es to life.

Farb­film Ver­leih will hope­ful­ly be able to bring this won­der­ful beau­ty of a doc­u­men­tary to cin­e­mas as soon as pos­si­ble. Jan­na Ji Won­ders cre­ates such a per­son­al, touch­ing work, you don’t want to stop to learn more about this women. And there’s a moment when you real­ize, that you maybe some­how missed your­self that moment, to learn more about all those sto­ries of your fam­i­ly, your ances­tors. All those sto­ries, that will be lost, for­got­ten, dis­ap­peared one day. Jan­na Ji Won­ders did the best, to archive those won­der­ful, fun­ny, sad, melan­cholic, depress­ing and what­ev­er sto­ries of her fam­i­ly.

FILMOGRAPHY JANNA JI WONDERS
2020 WALCHENSEE FOREVER, doc, 110’
2015 I REMEMBER, short, 30’
2008 HOLY HOME, short, 10’
2006 LOVING YOU, short, 2’
2005 STREET PUNK MOSCOW, short doc, 35’
2003 WAITING FOR SUMMER, short, 10’
2002 BLING BLING, doc, 60’