Pelym
- Pelym
- Dokumentary - D 1998, 110 Min.
- Production
A Coproduction of Halbtotal Film GmbH & Co.KG
, a Coproduction of and Hektor Rydzewski Bild &Ton supported by funds of the Filmstiftung NRW and Hessische Filmförderung.- Director
- Andrzej Klamt, Ulrich Rydzewski
- Script
- Andrzej Klamt
- Prices & Awards
Award of the International Dok.fest Munich 1998
Best German Documentary Duisburger Filmwoche 1998
- Camera
- Ulrich Rydzewski
- Editor
- Ulrich Rydzewski, Andrzej Klamt
- Content:
The word Pelym refers to many isolated Russian penal colonies renowned for their strict regimes and hard living conditions. It is also a geographical region on the edge of Ural Mountains which is as well the border between Europe and Asia. Since 400 years the region has a "special mission" as a location for Russian reclamation labour camps. The film takes a look at life today at the camp as well as the villages nearby, where some of the former prisoners settled. Interesting individuals and great views of deep green Siberian forest create an unusual climate.
- Press
" "Pelym" by Andrzej Klamt and Ulrich Rydzewski was honored, the most complex and with the most powerful images among the winners. (...) The beautiful images of the landscape seem to be fully absorbed with pain. We learn how life works in the camp, meet pleasant-looking people who describe themselves as "wolves", and people that spent so much of her life in the camp that they can't make any use of their freedom."
- Süddeutsche Zeitung, Martina Knoben
"(...) The foreign lives in the pictures of this epic film. The camera shows in long, gentle settings the hardening of the men who served some dozens of years in the camps, and are not able to imagine a different kind of life any more."
- Die Welt, Thilo Wydra
"In "Pelym" Andrzej Klamt and Ulrich Rydzewski visit a detention camp at the northern edge of the Urals to gently ask detainees and camp residents and embed their lifestories in visually stunning images. They succeed in impressing the feeling of subjective experienced time and historical stagnation."
- Die Presse, Robert Buchschwenter
"To have time that is in Pelym a blessing and a curse together. To show how time flies is the special quality of this film, which translates the interplay of light, color and landscape, the wistful prison ballads and the faces of solitude - a sort of Russian elegy."
- Frankfurter Rundschau, Heike Kuhn
