Sonsbeek 2026 x Focus: Good Bye, Lenin! (rooftop cinema)
Sonsbeek 2026
Focus Filmtheater, Arnhem
18 September, 21.00hr –
9 September 2026, 23.30hr
Inleiding
When a devoted East German socialist falls into a coma before the Berlin Wall comes down, her son faces an impossible task: reconstructing the entire world of the GDR to protect her fragile heart from the shock of what has changed. Good Bye, Lenin! is both a tender family story and a sharp, affectionate portrait of how people hold onto a time that for others is already past.
In the context of Sonsbeek 2026, Good Bye, Lenin! offers an insight into the processes of forgetting and remembering, and the contradictory ways in which people respond to change. The film offers a rich meditation on the many forms memory and memorialisation can take - from monumental architecture to more everyday matters such as Spreewälder Gurken. The development of image making goes hand in hand with cultures of remembrance. The film also shows us the futile struggle to control memory – the passage of time will ultimately always gain the upper hand.
Kim van der Werff, Focus’ Head of Programmes and Education, will introduce the film.
Dutch subtitles, German spoken
About Darkness Reframed
Throughout August and September, Focus Film Theater and Sonsbeek 2026 present Darkness Reframed - eight screening programs featuring cinema classics and artist shorts at the roof top cinema and in the cinema room. With introductions and Q&As afterwards, the film program opens up the space to reflect on how Western imperialisation and its inherited forms of representation have impacted memory. Departure point for the film program is the Heart of Darkness exhibition curated by Marianne Brouwer at the Kröller-Muller museum in 1994-95, which has been a touchstone for Sonsbeek 2026. Part of the exhibition was Citizen X, a video programme curated by Corinne Diserens, which will be revisited in Darkness Reframed.