Student documentary film ‘Together’ successful at film festivals

Two awards for film about group dynamics

A student film team from the Digital Media Production degree programme at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences already has reason to celebrate at the start of the festival season. Their documentary film ‘Together’ has been honoured at film festivals in Paris and Mannheim. ‘I am delighted for our students and congratulate them on their success. The awards are a great reward for the great commitment and intensive work of the film team,’ says Prof Dr Holger Rada, who supervised the student work.

The film about group dynamics has received two awards within a short space of time. At the Arts and Film Festival Mannheim, it was honoured in the ‘Best Student Film’ category. The jury of the Cine Paris Film Festival honoured ‘Together’ as the best short documentary film. 

His own experiences at a Fischtown Pinguins Bremerhaven ice hockey match gave student Marc Diercksen the idea of making a documentary film about group dynamics. ‘You're standing in the fan block and you don't actually have anything to do with ice hockey, but the fans start singing and cheering. They cheer on their team and somehow you suddenly join in and are right in the middle of the action. You have fun and feel connected to a group of people you've never seen before,’ he says.

Together with his fellow students Emilie Seidl, Jakob Hardieß, Faraz Heidari, Virginia Teutenberg, Viola de Vries, Frederik Bosch, Nicola Renn, Keno Plettig, Mika Rösler, Carl Stamer, Elias Stepien, Caroline Looke and Bastian Steigerwald, Diercksen followed five very different people in private. The film focuses on why they have become part of a particular community and why they feel so connected to the group members, even though they don't actually know them. The film deals with the diverse relationships between the individual and the group and explores the question of what influence the group has on the self. Emilie Seidl is enthusiastic about the diversity of the topic and the different group constellations: ‘Each of us is in groups or surrounded by groups. It was therefore all the more exciting to produce a documentary film that deals with precisely this and accompanies groups that couldn't be more different and yet have a lot in common.’

Every year, the Digital Media Production degree programme produces documentary films that are awarded prizes at various film festivals. Most recently, these were the productions ‘Männer’ and ‘3 Uhr 8° Ost’, which were shown at a total of 23 festivals. The coming weeks will show whether ‘Zusammen’ can build on these successes. The students and their professor Holger Rada are currently waiting for feedback from other festival juries.

The trailer for the film can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE4DmB3IBaw.