Marie Wilke shooting her fourth feature-length documentary
by Teresa Vena
- The new project by the German director, bearing the working title Altmark, focuses on an area of Saxony-Anhalt used as a training area by the national army
Altmark is located in the northern part of the German region of Saxony-Anhalt. This area of the country is sparsely populated and rural, and is mostly defined by agriculture and a rather frugal architecture reminiscent of that of the Hanseatic cities. It's here that an extensive military site was built in the 1930s. It is used as a training area for the German army and also includes a garrison town, in which parts of the military corps reside. The site covers a surface area of 323 square kilometres. It is the third-biggest military area in Germany and the most modern in Europe.
A new documentary by Marie Wilke, with the working title Altmark, delves into this parallel world, in which one war scenario after another is staged and tested. The German director studied at the ZeLIG School for Television and Film in Bolzano and at Berlin’s University of the Arts. Altmark is her fourth documentary, but is not the first to take an interest in the structure of the state and the political system. While the medium-length film Mit Leib und Seele dealt with the healthcare system, Staatsdiener, her first feature-length effort, explored the police force, and Aggregate [+see also:
trailer
film profile] followed the Social Democratic Party in an attempt to understand the dynamics within the German parliament.
The first half of the shoot for Altmark has been completed, while the second half is still to come and is scheduled for December 2024. As was the case for her previous projects, the director will be working with DoP Alexander Gheorghiu (Wagenknecht [+see also:
trailer
film profile], My Wonderful West Berlin [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). Recently, they collaborated on the six-part true-crime series Höllental, which tells the story of the murder of a child that took place in 2001 and was one of the most shocking crime cases in Germany.
Altmark is a production by Ma.ja.de Filmproduktion in co-production with TV channel SWR and in collaboration with MDR. It has been funded by the Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM), the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung and DFFF. Its release date is not yet known.
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