'' VISITATION '' : REFLECTIVE FILM HONOURS

CANNES : GERMAN auteur returns to cannes with reflective new film. Volker Schlondorff revists themes of history, memory and identity.

His latest work, ' Visitation ', which premiered out of competition on Saturday, draws on the writing of  German author Jenny Erpenbeck and weaves together personal and collective memory rather than offering a conventional historical account.

'' Although it's a film about German history, it's not presented like a history lesson,'' he told Reuters.

'' It consists of memories, especially the author's own memories, which give it an impressionistic  quality," he said.

The film, starring Lars Eidinger, Martina Gedeck and Suzzane Wolff, traces the political upheaval that influences the life several families who return to the same lake house outside Berlin.

'' You realize that if you lived in Germany in that century, you couldn't take a single breath without inhaling political tension,'' Schloendorff said.

For Schloendorff, the subject matter is also deeply personal. '' The century it depicts is almost exactly what I experienced,'' he said.

Drawing on family memories, he recreated scenes from the 1930s based on photographs belonging to his mother.

'' They are on the beach, playing games, splashing in the water,'' he said. '' And you don't know - did they realise that 30 kilometres away in Berlin, the Nazis were holding their massive parades.

!WOW! thanks Reuters.