Ross McElwee as Guest

The U.S. documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee became known in Germany for his legendary Confederate movie Sherman's March (USA 1981–85). On the occasion of his stay at the dffb, we will present the Berlin premiere of BRIGHT LEAVES (USA 2003), a film about family myths, the tobacco industry and cinema - in a combination, typical of McElwee, of research, chance, humor, and self-reflection, as well as a personal off-screen commentary. His autobiographical journey through the tobacco plantations of North Carolina, where he grew up, starts amidst a sea of light-green tobacco leaves. Through the (self-)ironic, associative examination of the interrelations between his family story and the melodrama Bright Leaf (1950) by Michael Curtiz, as well as the past and present of tobacco cultivation, McElwee portrays a lifestyle, reflects on the phenomenon of smoking, and pursues economic and cultural historiography. (Dec. 13)