This film was released on Friday 17th April 2015 and is no longer screening.

With this new film,Edgar Reitz’s sprawling, epic Heimat series now runs to some 57 hours covering the history of the fictitious Simon family, residents of the Hunsrück area of Germany’s Rhineland. While previous instalments have covered the years 1919 to 2000, Home from Home acts as a prequel, set in the 1840s, and requires no knowledge of Reitz’s earlier work. In the impoverished village of Schabbach, intellectual dreamer Jakob Simon (Jan Dieter Schnaider) prefers voracious reading in preparation for a move to the impossibly exotic Brazil to everyday responsibilities, much to the frustration of his blacksmith father.

Distraction comes in the form of neighbour Jettchen (Antonia Bill, in the film’s outstanding performance), and an increasing engagement with local protests against aristocratic privilege. The film’s lengthy running time allows for a complexity of character and narrative that ensures the film remains constantly engaging.(Notes by Kevin Coyne.)

Don’t forget we now schedule weekly.

★★★★★ Time Out London

 ★★★★ The Guardian ★★★★ Huffington Post