ESSAY DOCUMENTARY, 2020 / HINTER UNSEREM HORIZONT (ORIGINAL TITLE) / COMMISSIONED AS PART OF THE “AB 18!” DOCUMENTARY SERIES / ZDF & 3SAT / GRIMME AWARD NOMINATED / 36′

DIRECTED BY DENNIS & PATRICK WEINERT / COMMISSIONING EDITORS ACHIM FORST & UDO BREMER / MUSIC BY TON THAT AN / A WEINERT BROTHERS GBR PRODUCTION

Dennis and Patrick are not only brothers – they also work and live together. Over the past years they have built a reputation as young crisis reporters in their native Germany, but a dangerous incident now forces the brothers to re-think their chosen path in life.

After reporting from countries like Burkina Faso, the Congo or Afghanistan, Dennis and Patrick realise during one of their last missions in the heart of Africa that they should start questioning what exactly drives them to take life-threatening risks. They embark on a journey into their past and by using their most intuitive tool: the camera. Their search for clues begins in their parents’ house, in a small town in western Germany, where they made their first amateur films as children. They return to their hometown from their country of residence Vietnam and begin to point the camera at each other, thereby turning themselves into the protagonists of their new film. But their journey also takes Dennis and Patrick into the depths of their archival footage: Videos and photos which chronicle their experiences on the Taliban front, in the Rohingya refugee camps or during the civil war in the Central African Republic.

They want to find out what lies behind these images they recorded and what they reveal about their own development. Ultimately, Dennis and Patrick have to question whether this self-image they have created can actually be sustainable, or if it will only lead them further and further into danger.

Deep in the mountains of northern Vietnam, the brothers re-think their concept of identity and try to look at their work from a new perspective.

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