A requiem for the 20th century by the most daring documentary filmmaker in the history of German cinema. World premiere as part of the contemporary programme of the Festival of Films Regained.
Nightsong
- Date:
- 28 Sep 2025,
17:00–18:35
- Age restrictions
- 18+
Nachtgesang
2025, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Germany
80 minutes, German with Russian subtitles
documentary
T
Behind the pulpit of the Gothic church, speakers take turns. A thousand names are written on the rustling pages: that’s how many people committed suicide in the town of Demmin in the spring of 1945. For decades, their fate was a taboo subject in Germany. Eighty years after the end of the war, the film classic Hans-Jürgen Sieberberg voices their names and, with the help of Mozart and Brahms, performs a requiem for them, creating a space of remembrance and cross-border cultural solidarity.
Shot form Nightsong, 2025
Nightsong is the epilogue to Syberberg’s career-long reckoning with twentieth-century German history.
— Jan Brachmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The film serves as a brilliant afterword to Sieberberg’s last year’s Demmin Cantos, which is also featured in the programme of the Festival of Films Regained.
