Volker Schlöndorff is the most European of German filmmakers. From The Tin Drum to Diplomacy, this film explores the life and work of a border-crossing artist who, by leaving his country, gained the perspective to portray it better than anyone else. His personal quest also provides a unique point of view on both German and European history. Schlöndorff’s life and fate acutely address the difficult question of identity. How do you construct your identity when you have been uprooted? What does the sense of belonging to a country depend on? And what are we if we reject our roots? Volker Schlöndorff is part of the generation of Germans that was branded by guilt, that came of age steeped in shame about Nazism. His move to France while still a teenager seems like an attempt to escape his nationality and to become “more French than the French”. When professional success arrived, he fled even further, all the way to Hollywood. And yet, few artists have espoused the history of their native country, investigating its grey areas in search of the roots of the evil that decayed it, documenting through fiction the gaps in its contemporary history. What makes his story so gratifying is that he performed that serious task in a completely undisciplined way, dis turbing the established order, contesting official history. He is Germany’s bad conscience incarnate, and through his films, he managed to transform that criticism into a body of work of great moral and artistic value. Making this documentary is also a response, a rare opportunity to hold up a positive example. An example of someone who, from a very young age, refused the nationalism he had received as an inheritance, was able to cross borders to escape the determinism of birth and live a singular existence. “We are the decision- makers in our own lives!” That’s what Schlöndorff, who believes that everything is possible, seems to be telling us.

Pierre-Henri Gibert