Home Sweet Home, the first documentary I saw at Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival last week, proved to also be one of the most compelling, both thematically and conceptually. And this in spite of a very strong line-up made up of some of the best documentaries screening at festivals this year.

The filmmaker, Annika Mayer, artfully put together an immersive narrative about the dark side of domesticity and the invisibility of domestic violence using Super8 recordings that her grandparents shot in the 60s, whilst showing how all this is still relevant today by confronting the viewer with some horrendous statistics at the end.

The very first images struck me as reminiscent of the opening sequence of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet: an idyllic, pristine setting with a fancy house and a beautiful garden in a small town, in Germany we find out. It’s the time of the German “Economic Miracle”: the members of the nuclear family look happy, enjoying their vacation in the North Sea, or their Sunday trip to the National Garden Show.

But behind this artificial facade, another reality is lurking, quasi invisible to the naked eye. In order to reveal the truth, the filmmaker looks behind the images and digs deeper, fumbling through the furthest recesses of her grandma’s memory, in a delicate and sensitive manner, unearthing a painful story that all the family members knew but rarely spoke about.

Grandma Rose is the main star of the film, it’s through her narration that the secrets and lies of post-war West German family life gradually come to light. And if only this kind of trauma belonged in the past…

I sat down with the filmmaker Annika Mayer to find out more about her film projects, the topic of partner violence and how the story of her grandma is still relevant to us today.

Dana Knight: What is your background and what led you to making this documentary?

Annika Mayer: I come from cultural anthropology, then I focused on visual anthropology but I decided not to go into academia and to make documentaries instead. I edited a feature documentary, then I moved to Berlin and studied editing at The Film School. Then I set up a production company with a friend because it is really hard to find producers. 

I want to make a feature film about the structural problems that cause domestic violence but I thought I should start with my own family. I knew about my grandmother’s story so at the beginning I just went with an audio recorder and asked her questions and I was quite surprised that she was willing to talk on camera. And then I went with the camera and filmed at home. Then my parents moved and said they were going to throw away the Super8 material from my grandparents. … But to her defence, my mum kept the material all this time, my father would have thrown it away much earlier. 

Dana Knight: I was very impressed with the quality of the Super8 material, I thought the person who shot it must have had ambitions of becoming a filmmaker because you have interesting close-ups, details, it’s not just another home video. Was it your grandfather who shot most of it?

Annika Mayer: No, my grandmother said they both did. I was also very amazed that they were quite talented in a way. 

Dana Knight: How many hours of footage did they shoot and over what period?

Annika Mayer: It was from ’58 to ’72. But most of the footage is from the ‘60s. Then some scenes from the ‘70s when they went to Bulgaria with a ship. When we see them driving away, that’s the last image I have. In total, 1H 45min…So I used a lot of the material. 

Dana Knight: Was shooting on Super8 fashionable at the time?

Annika Mayer: You had to have money for Super8 of course, my grandparents were well-off. It was just a way, when the children came, to manifest family life. In Western Germany, if people had money, they would buy a Super8 camera. But not so many people had it, it was more of a class thing. 

Dana Knight: The opening scene reminded me of Blue Velvet: all that resplendent greenery, the beautiful house, sunshine, the idyllic facade. Then it all starts to unravel, there is a dark reality lurking underneath. That was a perfect opening sequence but did you have David Lynch in mind?

Annika Mayer: No but now that you mentioned it I see the connection. My intention was to show how the West Germany perfect family life was constructed. What was striking to me when I read about it is that after the war families were very broken, many men died, some men came back. So women married the brother or uncles, leading to all kinds of family constellations. Or just women living together with the children. In West Germany they created a family ministry and it was very conservative and influenced by the church, so they had this image of the perfect nuclear family: the father, the mother and two children, the man goes to work, the woman stays at home and cares for the children. That was the atmosphere in West Germany, a lot of women did not work. In East Germany it was different. So I wanted to have  that context at the beginning of the film. 

Dana Knight: Your grandparents appeared to have the perfect family life that West Germany wanted to put forward. Was the domestic violence a secret in your family, how did you find out about it?

Annika Mayer: Within the family, it hasn’t been a secret. My granddad died when I was 10. I heard about it a little later. First from my dad then from my grandmother. It was never a secret in our family but it wasn’t a thing they would openly speak about either, with friends for instance. 

Dana Knight: Would you say it is quite unusual for a German woman of that generation to open up emotionally?

Annika Mayer: Yes, very unusual. I have a very trusting relationship with my grandma and also she thought that I’m doing this little research thing, she did not expect this film to play in film festivals. So she was super open to talk to me about it and  I was also quite astonished that she was willing to speak so openly. She always said this is a closed chapter for her and that she is fine. I’m not completely sure that’s true. For her it was a very dark chapter in her life, she had a better time afterwards. 

Dana Knight:  A chapter that lasted over 20 years…because the domestic violence in her case started right at the beginning. 

Annika Mayer: Yes, a very long chapter. 

Dana Knight: And it was actually your father who put a stop to it, he was her saviour. 

Annika Mayer: Yes, when my father was studying in Mannheim, he would come home to make sure she locked the door to her bedroom before she went to sleep so my grandfather couldn’t enter. At one point he said, ‘Look, I’m gonna go away and create my own family, I can’t protect you like this anymore. So it’s your decision if you want to handle him alone’. And for her it was the moment when she decided to divorce. 

Dana Knight:  Nowadays we’re more exposed to footage of domestic violence, what comes to mind is the evidence in the famous divorce case of Amber Heard & Johnny Depp. But in your film there are only gestures or grimaces that point to a darker reality, the violence is not captured directly, we can only imagine it. Your grandmother had the mentality that she is supposed to endure it so I assume that even if she could, your grandmother would not have dared to film those moments…

Annika Mayer: No, she would have not, she thought it’s not her place to document it… She always said, ‘I’m a very simple woman, why would anyone be interested in my story?’. It’s very typical of women of her generation to identify themselves completely with the domestic space, to be there to care for their man and to deny their own individuality, to not be a person of their own. But my grandma is very outspoken, for me she is super strong. And I think that’s exactly what got her into trouble with my granddad, that she wouldn’t shut up. 

When I was little, she was living alone, for me she was always this strong woman. But at the same time, she married twice again after her divorce from my grandad, because she always felt that a woman needed a man by her side to be  whole. We had this whole discussion where I was telling her, ‘No, you don’t need a man’. And she would be, ‘Yes, you’re not complete without the other’. So she still has very much internalised this idea of a woman being inferior to a man. 

But she’s also willing to accept the fact that for instance I live differently and that I’m happy this way. She can’t fully understand why I do this but she believes me, she believes that I don’t need a man to be happy, that I’m doing my stuff and that my thinking is different. 

Dana Knight: How was this process for your father?

Annika Mayer: For my father it was very difficult because he had a lot of nightmares, a lot of things came up. I was the one who told him that he needs to look into it more deeply. But I also underestimated the trauma. In the end he learnt that if he spoke about it, nothing bad would come off it. It’s a way to process the whole thing.…but it has been tough. 

When he restarted his life with my mum, he managed to push these dark feelings away but if you stir things up, everything comes up again.

With domestic violence, you really need these ‘excuses’ to speak about it. Excuses like making a film. And really engaging and asking questions… Of course we were talking about it in the family but not often. So a film like this makes you question things on a deeper level. It’s a good thing but very exhausting. 

Dana Knight: Do you feel the making this film was somehow therapeutic for your family?

Annika Mayer: In a way. But a film cannot change things, I feel that sometimes we have too high expectations about what a film can do. But it was a start. But I wouldn’t say the film was therapeutic in the sense that now everything is ok. 

Dana Knight: At the end of the film, there are some horrendous statistics: “Every 3rd day in Germany a woman is killed by a partner or ex-partner”. That’s a lot of women. What is the source of these statistics?

Annika Mayer: It’s  police reports. Every year there is a report on partner violence from the last year. 

Yes, there is still a lot of domestic and partner violence. If you look at the statistics for partner violence, it’s way higher. This is really shocking, it’s still so prevalent. So I put that statistic there because I didn’t want people to leave the cinema and think, ‘OK, so this was after the war, men came back traumatised and the violence showed up within the home but now it’s way better”. Of course the context matters and the war definitely played a role. But it’s more the context than the reason. So if domestic violence is still happening it means there is a reason for it and that has to do with our patriarchal society. That’s why things don’t change. 

Dana Knight: That’s shocking because the media almost stopped talking about it. 

Annika Mayer: Exactly. That’s a really sad thing in Germany. Spain for instance has implemented a lot of measures regarding partner violence. They have created safe spaces, women’s housing, committees where you can make a complaint. Also measures against stalking, if there is a verdict, the man has to wear a monitor bracelet, a GPS ankle bracelet and the woman is warned if he gets near. 

Spain implemented a lot of measures and the numbers went down. It’s not like you can’t do anything. Now they want to change things in Germany too. Germany signed the Istanbul convention that stipulates you have to provide a number of women’s housing per capita. But they don’t even fulfil the basics. They have to fight for the money which comes from women’s movements,  they don’t get regular money from the state, they always have to renew contracts. We all think the matter is being taken care of but it’s not. 

Dana Knight:  Is Spain the most advance country in Europe when it comes to tackling domestic violence?

Annika Mayer:I think so but I’m not 100% sure. I know that Spain had huge numbers and they got them down. 

Dana Knight:  The pay gap is also an issue in Germany. When I fist moved to Berlin I came across some statistics showing that in Germany women earn a lot less for the same job compared to men, compared to other countries in Europe. I did not expect this of Germany, I was shocked!

Annika Mayer: (laughing) Yeah, that’s true. 

Dana Knight:  I think there is a connection between the two issues, patriarchy is still very strong in Germany or maybe there aren’t enough activists and lobbying pushing for a change. 

Annika Mayer:I think there are many activists but it’s a very slow process to implement the changes. And it was really sad to see how quickly West Germany after the war went into this conservative patriarchal society and I am still wondering why. 

In East Germany it was different, women were working, had jobs but there was another issue there, the fact that they also took care of children and house chores on top of it, so things were still not equal. And they had more abortion rights. After reunification, with abortion laws and everything, they chose to stick to the West Germany model, which was way more conservative. There was a regression for women’s rights. 

Dana Knight: We are living through a backlash, with abortion rights being taken away from women in certain parts of the world …

Annika Mayer: This is something I am really afraid of. Movements always come in waves, there is some progress, then a backlash, then more progress. But with the right wing, and the hateful and aggressive mentality towards women, I am afraid we could lose a lot of our rights, that women before us fought for. It feels like now we have to fight to keep what previous generations of women achieved for us. Which is kind of weird. There are still movements but it’s going too slow. 

Dana Knight: You put the film together very artfully, you created an immersive atmosphere, you took us on a journey. What was your process in terms of sound design and other formal aspects?

Annika Mayer: I had a very good collaboration with the sound designer, we wanted to have these elements, water, glass, and Gaston, the sound designer, started working with them. We sometimes created the music out of sound design. Then we talked about how to have people immersed into a scene. It’s also a film about memory and your memory isn’t always 100% accurate so we wanted to have the sound design a little bit off, like you remember things but you’re not sure it’s 100% correct. 

For me it was important not to have a soundtrack that puts you into a specific emotion. I wanted to create an open space where people can investigate the images and the story and see for themselves. If you put a story about partner violence in a dark space, people feel bad about it, and then that’s it. But I wanted to open the conversation, I wanted  us all to look more closely and talk about it more openly so the sound design was key in achieving this. 

There is also the concept that domestic violence is not visible in the public space normally. You can’t tell from pictures if a man is violent or not. Reports say it’s men in all positions, very influential,  who can be violent at home so we really can’t know. 

My question was how to make domestic violence more visible. So I looked at the images for clues, but there are only little clues. It’s only when my grandmother says, ‘Yeah, I saw it on his face again”, that’s very strong but we only know because she tells us that there is something in his eyes that she recognises. 

Home Sweet Home is next showing at Achtung Berlin Film Festival in April, and at UNARCHIVE in Rome in May.