Adapted from Jenny Erpenbeck’s acclaimed novel Heimsuchung and directed by legendary auteur Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum), Visitation encapsulates a hundred years of German history by focusing on events unfolding in just two buildings on adjoining plots of lakeside land near Berlin.

While snippets of archive footage show the rise and fall of the Third Reich and then the rise and fall of the Communist-controlled German Democratic Republic, this economical yet expansive microcosmic narrative features an especially strong cast that includes Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others) and Lars Eidinger (Dying) as some of the visitors and residents who pass through all four dimensions of the story. Like two of Schlöndorff’s greatest works, The Tin Drum and The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, this manages to show how political forces directly impact personal lives, but achieves that without ever feeling preachy, emblematic or obvious — evidence of the refined cinematic and literary taste that’s always run through his work.








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Visitation




The Bottom Line


A return to form.





Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Premiere)
Cast: Martina Gedeck, Lars Eidinger, Susanne Wolff, Ulrich Matthes, Detlev Buck, Michael Maertens, Maria Matschke Engel, Angela Winkler, Josefin Platt, Ludwig Trepte, Matthias Hungerbühler, Stella Denis-Winkler, Wigand Witting, Ava Weisbrod, Pelle Bo Winkler, David Bennent, Nina Lilith Völsch, Sara Bartknecht, Romy Miesner, Asta Willmine Winkler, Sean Douglas, Camille Moltzen, Yvon Moltzen
Director/screenwriter: Volker Schlöndorff, based on a novel by Jenny Erpenbeck


1 hour 58 minutes

Much of the film, which in narrative terms ob...