The masterpiece of German Women’s Cinema which pictures the German history from feminist viewpoint. Like so many other films from the New German Cinema era, this is an autobiographical film based on childhood experiences from around the time of World War II. Through the narration of Anna, who is now a filmmaker, the painful experiences with fascism and war that her mother went through, are recreated. The relationship between her mother and her father, the relationship between herself and her mother are represented in a lyrical melodrama, but the insertion of a documentary film that shows actual scenes from the war creates a distancing effect for the story. Through the mother-daughter relationship shown in this
 film, Helma Sander-Brahms attempts to explore women’s identity and also look at the history of Germany in a new way from a woman’s point of view. The period when her father Hans participates in the war is a time when patriarchy is temporarily suspended. During this period, a mother and a daughter spend happy days moving around the city that has been destroyed by war. Meanwhile, the time following the war is portrayed as a period when the women are oppressed and the happiness of the family is destroyed, as her father has returned from the war, a physically and mentally broken man. This serves as a turning point for the existing point of view that regards the fifties as a time of prosperity while World WarⅡ as a time of the death and destruction. It would be interesting to note the differences between this film and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun, which also deals with a similar time in history. (KWON Eun-sun)