Thomas Heise’s ‘Übergang’ is making its world premiere in the out-of-competition section at the Locarno Film Festival. The documentary represents the completion of a project initiated by Heise, a prominent German filmmaker known for chronicling the lives of ordinary people in East Germany across reunification and subsequent decades. Following Heise’s death in 2024, his longtime collaborators Peter Badel and Chris Wright completed the film, which serves as both a portrait of the director and an exploration of his life’s work.
The documentary was originally conceived as a study of Berlin’s Schönhauser Allee, a major transportation hub. The final film employs a combination of newly shot black-and-white footage, archival materials, photographs, and voice-over narration to construct a meditation on time, transition, and change. The title ‘Übergang,’ meaning passage or transition in German, carries dual significance—referring both to the physical station’s function as an interchange and to the broader social and political transformations that shaped Heise’s life and artistic practice, spanning from East German society through reunification and contemporary challenges.
In developing the completed work, Badel and Wright made deliberate creative decisions to honor Heise’s vision while establishing their own artistic voice. The filmmakers gained access to Heise’s personal archive through his husband, which proved instrumental in preserving his critical perspective throughout the editing process. Rather than incorporating interview footage or attempting to explain every element’s origin, the directors focused on creating meaningful dialogues between disparate materials, including previously unseen outtakes, VHS recordings, diary excerpts, and unpublished texts.
The directors approached the project as lived history rather than biographical homage, examining how individual experience intersects with larger political and social currents. Badel and Wright emphasized that Heise’s consistent concern with overlooked lives and critical observation of contemporary society informed their editorial choices. The film’s concluding sequence features an encounter with an unhoused individual at Schönhauser Allee station, whose reflections on time and transience provide the final words—reflecting Heise’s practice of centering marginal perspectives in his documentary practice.
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