Alice von Gwinner & Anne-Katrin Kiewitt
Halbwertszeit (Half-life)
Film | 2012
Funded by the Kreativfonds & Women’s Promotion Fund 2012
»Halbwertszeit« [Half life] is a dystopian, episodic short film by Anne-Katrin Kiewitt and Alice von Gwinner. The filmmakers co-wrote the script and directed the film in collaboration.
The story, inspired by the catastrophic events in Fukushima in 2011, takes place in an imaginary future in Germany where a nuclear power plant was destroyed by a natural catastrophe. The film begins a few years later and examines how people of different walks of life deal with the catastrophe, and more specifically how they deal with radioactive, naturally grown and artificially produced food. In telling their story, the filmmakers decided to create interwoven episodes to provide a better general impression of the circumstances. The film follows the lives of a single mother, who is a gardener, a cook in a pub outside of town, a waiter in a posh restaurant and its owner.