Revision

A documentary becomes a cinematic re-examination. It reconstructs the circumstances that led to the deaths of two men in a field near the German-Polish border in 1992. With an increasingly oppressive intensity, Scheffner weaves a tapestry of landscape and memory, witness statements, files and investigations.

On 29 June 1992, a farmer discovers two bodies in a cornfield in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Investigations reveal that the dead are Romanian citizens. They are shot by hunters whilst attempting to cross the EU’s external border. The hunters claim to have mistaken the men for wild boars. Four years later, the trial begins. It is never proven which of the hunters fired the fatal shot. The verdict: acquittal. dpa reports: “No one travelled from Romania to hear the verdict.”
The files contain the names and addresses of Grigore Velcu and Eudache Calderar. Their families were unaware that a trial had ever taken place. Revision subjects a legally concluded criminal case to a cinematic re-examination, interweaving places, people and memories to create a fragile tapestry of versions and perspectives on a ‘European history’.