"Transition" – A Film for Thomas Heise

Film | Premiere | Talk

Still aus Übergang von Peter Badel und Chris Wright – Schwarzweißfoto durch Busfenster; Menschen überqueren Stadtstraße; Gleise; Brücke mit Schriftzug Kottbusser Tor.

“Everything should carry on as before. Including the film shooting.” This was the instruction given by Thomas Heise, shortly before his death in May 2024, to his long-standing collaborators, the cinematographer Peter Badel and the producer Heino Deckert. Just before that, they had started work together on Heise’s final project: a film about his city, Berlin, and the key stages of his life. Only a few days into filming, the director succumbed to a brief, serious illness. Obviously, things cannot carry on as before.

Peter Badel and editor Chris Wright work together to find a way to carry on Heise’s idea whilst remaining true to his radical aesthetic approaches. Alongside observations made on Schönhauser Allee and numerous conversations with friends and colleagues, extensive research into Heise’s estate and various archives has given rise to a preliminary conceptual framework – a film for Thomas Heise.

Previously unpublished texts, diary entries, photographs and film sequences are assembled in a fragmentary manner and placed in dialogue with the present. The result is a portrait of a precise, provocative observer, covering German forms of government and contemporary history. Heise comments: “Documentary film outlasts the state in which it is made.”

"Transition"
Documentary, Germany 2026, 120 mins.
Written and directed by Peter Badel, Chris Wright
Concept: Thomas Heise
Producer: Heino Deckert
Cinematography: Anja Simon
Editor: Chris Wright
Featuring the voices of Tom Schilling, Laura Talenti and Lena Lauzemis

Welcome:
Helke Misselwitz, film director and director of the Film and Media Arts Section

In conversation:
Peter Badel and Chris Wright

Moderation:
Grit Lemke

Price: €7.50

Reduced price: €5.00

Next date:

• Date Sunday, 15/November/2026 18:00 bis 21:00
• Venue Akademie der Künste - Hanseatenweg
• Address Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin-Tiergarten