Eight Hundred Times Lonely is an eighty-four-minute non-commercial art house documentary film about famous 86-year-old German filmmaker Edgar Reitz. Anna Hepp, the young filmmaker of this documentary, meets with Reitz in one of Germany's most famous cinemas: the Lichtburg in Essen. This black and white and partly colored film's main focus is a continuous dialogue between these two people from two different generations and genders: young and old - female and male. Anna Hepp asks the film expert Edgar Reitz about if and how cinema might be fading away from Germany's media culture. They talk about the difficulties of filmmaking and the struggle to survive in this business, then and now. The bottom line of the film is: just as at some point you have to say good-bye to everything in life, friends, family, loved ones, you might also have to say good-bye to cinema culture. Filmmaking is an attempt to preserve memories forever. The film is a declaration of Love for Cinema and Love for Filmmaking.

800 Mal Einsam - ein Tag mit dem Filmemacher Edgar Reitz

In her film “A day and An Eternity”, Anna Hepp takes a look back over the last days of her grandmother’s 94-year life. The old woman lived alone, and Hepp accompanied her everyday life in the cramped confines of her apartment. In this place, the same gestures and the same routine, which had established themselves over the years, took place every day. Anna Hepp’s black-and-white pictures document the traces of age without impinging upon the old woman’s dignity and independence. The traces are engraved in the sagging skin, the shakiness in her hands and the tiredness in her eyes. The camera concentrates on Dorothea’s body whose movements determine the rhythm of the pictures. In long shots, Hepp makes space so that the apparent triviality of the moment can develop into an entire life story.

A Day and an Eternity

Turkish Kraut is a documentary film portrait of two young families with German-Turkish background, who live in the Ruhr region. The families open up their private living space and invite the viewer to take part and experience their lives, with the hope of dismantling prejudice and cultural misunderstandings. The film shows, with the typical humor of the region, that despite social and religious differences, love knows no bounds.