Der Laden

The Store

The Store, adapted from major novelist Erwin Strittmatter′s autobiographical trilogy of the same name, tells the story of the Matt family over three decades. The first part is about the ten year-old boy Esau Matt, the film′s main character, and his childhood in the little village in the Lausitz near to the German-Polish border.

In 1919, his parents open a general store there with its own bakery. Esau lives in a very confined space on the small estate with his grandparents, his parents, the mad uncle, the pretty nanny and his brothers and sisters: all totally different characters and seldom in harmony with one another. Esau, who is different from the other children in the village, wants to become a writer when he grows up. He is a dreamer and yet a painstaking, sometimes inexorable chronicler. In the second part, Esau Matt attends secondary school in the town and meets his first love. The third part is about Matt′s return to the village of his childhood at the end of 1945, the love of his life, the marriage to another woman and his decision to become a writer.
3 Episodes à 90 minutes/2462 metres

Source: German films Service & Marketing GmbH