Einar Schleef – No Germany Did I Find
GER 2026, 93 min
Theater director and total artist Einar Schleef came from the heart of post-war Germany. He fled from the East but never truly found a home in the West. His self-destructive struggle with the dark chapters of German history marked his life and work, and ended his creative journey far too young.
Synopsis
EINAR SCHLEEF was a theatre director, set designer, writer, photographer, painter and filmmaker. A total artist who failed to find a home in either part of Germany. He employed an array of artistic means to delve into the dark depths of German history and bring it into the present day. This portrait of a combative yet vulnerable loner and enfant terrible with self-destructive potential explores theatre, the mechanisms of repression in post-war German society and the reality of life before and after the fall of the Wall; a total artist emerges from the archives: "I am not a man, I am dynamite!"
Einar Schleef must be discovered. He holds a mirror up to us and allows us to understand ourselves in the here and now. His words and images capture our rootlessness and inner longing for a home. He shakes us out of our slumber, confronting us with what simmers beneath the surface of society.
Texts about the film
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
What Is To Become Art Must Burn
Einar Schleef’s radical escape into reality
Einar Schleef won’t let me be. Since the day 18 years ago when I stood before his massive pictures of Germany in an abandoned Karstadt building in Halle. Schleef never tires. He sets free energies, thoughts, and feelings. What is to become art must burn, Schleef says. I caught fire.
Schleef’s theme is also the theme of my films and texts: My roots in this country and its history. For me, no other artist has so unsparingly set themselves this task. ‘What from your fathers’ heritage is lent, earn it anew.’ Faust, the archetypal German subject, with which Schleef grappled his entire life.
The fractures in this country run straight through this man –the devastations of war, the division of Germany, the dislocations of reunification. I am familiar with Schleef’s inability to feel at home. It has
something to do with these fractures, which also run through my generation and through me.
The theatres must burn after every performance, Schleef says. This is not a call for violence, this is the seriousness with which Schleef mobilises people to tear away from their sense of well-being. Art is not allowed to be an escape from reality, it must be an escape into reality, in all its cruelty.
In Schleef’s staging of ‘Ein Sportstück’, armies of young men and women steel their bodies for deployment in a new war. The public of 1998 laughed at this scene. As I sat in the editing room, these images increasingly came to reflect the grim reality of our present day. ‘When I suffer, how do others suffer under these conditions,’ says Schleef. ‘And when I cannot live, why can others live.’
– Sandra Prechtel, February 2026
BIOGRAPHY SANDRA PRECHTEL
Sandra Prechtel was born in Munich in 1969 and has lived in Berlin since 1991. She studied comparative literature, film studies and political science in Munich, London and Berlin. She is a writer and director of documentary films and radio pieces as well as an author, and has screened her films at international film festivals.
FILMOGRAPHY SANDRA PRECHTEL
2026: EINAR SCHLEEF – No Germany Did I Find (Feature documentary, 93 min. Premiere: Berlin International Filmfestival)
2022: LIEBE ANGST (Feature documentary, 80 min. Premiere: Munich International Filmfestival)
2018: JAZZ ODER DIE LEHRE VOM FLIEGEN (Documentary, 43 min.)
2013: ROLAND KLICK – The Heart is a Hungry Hunter (Feature documentary, 80 min. Premiere: Berlin International Filmfestival )
2010: BELLE OF THE BALL (Documentary, 30 min, Premiere: Duisburg Film Week)
2008: SPORTSMAN LÖTZSCH (Feature documentary, 85 min. Premiere: DOK Leipzig)
2004: ND – Neues Deutschland (Feature documentary, 65 min. Premiere: DOK Leipzig)
Awards and Festivals
- Berlin International Film Festival - Forum 2026
- Neisse Film Festival 2026 - Audience Award (documentary film)
Credits
Director, Screenplay, Research
Sandra Prechtel
With
Einar Schleef, Elfriede Jelinek, Martin Wuttke, Jutta Hoffmann, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Wilhelm Schleef, Karl von Appen, Jürgen Holtz, Gertrud Schleef, Peter Iden, Rolf Hochhuth, Gerhard Ahrens, Sigrid Löffler, Alfred Biolek
Editor
Olaf Voigtländer, Katja Dringenberg
Music
Samuel Wiese, Marie-Claire Schlameus
Sound Design
Rainer Gerlach
Sound Mix
Matthias Schwab
Grading
Till Beckmann
Commissioning Editor
Rolf Bergmann
Production
Frieder Schlaich, Irene von Alberti
Produced by
Filmgalerie 451
In Coproduction with
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg
Founded by
Der Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Deutscher Filmförderfonds, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
Thanks to
Hans-Ulrich Müller-Schwefe, Heiner Sylvester, Thomas Bauer-Friedrich, Gabriele Gerecke, Jens Jakob Happ, Halina Daugird, Stefan Kolosko, Ute Schendel, Susan Todd, Christina Voigt, Katja Weingartshofer
Editing Assistants
Lydia Anemüller, Fionn George
Production Assistants
Viviana Kammel, Anna Bitter, Amon Wendel, Cyril Hilfiker
Production manager rbb
Dennis Münch
rbb Archive
Peter Kolando
Title Design
Simon Blume
World Premiere
Berlin International Film Festival - Forum, February 14, 2026
Distribution Details
Theatrical release: November 5, 2026, distributed by Filmgalerie 451.
Screening Format
DCP (2K, 25fps, 5.1)
H.264
Aspect Ratio
1:1,78 (16:9)
Language
German
Subtitles
English
Promotion Material
Poster (A1)
License Area
Worldwide