The Unfinished Symphony of Memory: Why Heise’s Final Film Haunts Us
In an era where history feels increasingly unstable, how do we preserve the stories that define us? Thomas Heise’s final film, Übergang, offers no easy answers—but that’s precisely what makes it essential viewing. Premiering posthumously at Locarno, this documentary isn’t just a farewell to a filmmaker; it’s a reckoning with how we archive the soul of a society in flux. Let me explain why this fragmented, deeply personal work feels like a warning bell for our times.
A Director’s Ghost in the Editing Room
When Heise died in 2024, he left behind more than unfinished footage—he left a philosophical puzzle. His collaborators, Peter Badel and Chris Wright, didn’t just inherit a project; they inherited the Sisyphean task of channeling a voice that could no longer guide them. Personally, I think their approach was brilliant: they refused to create a mausoleum for Heise’s vision. Instead, they treated his archive like a Ouija board, letting his aesthetic instincts haunt every cut and fade. But here’s the twist—they didn’t shy away from their own fingerprints. The film becomes a dialogue between past and present, like listening to an echo that occasionally interrupts itself. Isn’t that the most honest way to honor someone? To let their ideas evolve beyond their lifetime?
Schönhauser Allee: Where Time Folds Inward
The film’s setting—a bustling Berlin transit hub—feels almost too perfect. Schönhauser Allee isn’t just a location; it’s a metaphor made flesh. Every tram that arrives erases the one before. Tourists and beggars cross paths, unaware they’re part of the same historical tapestry. What fascinates me here is how Heise (and later Badel/Wright) uses this space to collapse decades. A 1990s home video of a family picnic fades into a TikTok-era smartphone clip of graffiti. The effect isn’t nostalgia; it’s temporal vertigo. If you blink, you might mistake East German pensioners for modern-day climate protesters. This is Heise’s genius: making transition feel less like a process and more like a fever dream we’re all trapped in.
Fragments as Resistance
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Übergang is a mess. And I mean that as high praise. The film stitches VHS outtakes, diary entries read in Heise’s voice, and Michael—our final interviewee, a homeless man who becomes the film’s accidental prophet. From my perspective, this chaos isn’t a flaw; it’s a manifesto. In an age of slick, algorithmically optimized documentaries, Heise’s fragmentary style feels like a middle finger to coherence. Why? Because real memory doesn’t come with chapter headings. The way he juxtaposes a 1989 protest chant with a 2024 NATO news bite isn’t lazy curation—it’s a challenge. It asks: Do you see the pattern yet? Most viewers won’t. That’s the point.
Michael’s Last Word: The Poetics of Collapse
And then there’s Michael, the homeless man who delivers the film’s closing line: “Time passes. That’s all.” If you miss the irony here, you’ve missed the whole game. Heise, the chronicler of East Germany’s silenced voices, gets the last laugh by letting capitalism’s collateral damage have the final say. A detail I find especially interesting: Michael wasn’t scripted. He wasn’t even “discovered” for his symbolism. He was just there—a man whose existence the world tries to edit out. By elevating him, the film does more than honor Heise’s legacy. It accuses us. It says: This is what transition looks like. Not grand reunifications or viral revolutions, but people forgotten at subway exits.
Why This Matters Now (Even If You’ve Never Heard of Heise)
Let’s zoom out. Europe’s far-right is surging. Germany’s coalition governments are crumbling. And here’s a film that whispers: Remember how fragile this all is. What many people don’t realize is that Heise’s work isn’t about the past—it’s about the dangerous elasticity of memory. When Wright mentions the film’s fear of “forgetting lessons from two world wars,” he’s not being dramatic. He’s sounding an alarm. Autocracy doesn’t arrive with tanks anymore; it creeps in through the erosion of attention spans, the sanitization of history into Instagram captions.
Übergang resists that erosion. Its refusal to explain, to tidy up Heise’s legacy into a TED Talk, feels radical. In my opinion, we need more art like this—art that doesn’t teach but haunts. Because sometimes, the only way to understand transition is to experience its vertigo firsthand. And sometimes, the loudest critiques of a society come not from academics or politicians, but from a filmmaker’s unfinished montage… and a beggar’s throwaway line.
