World Clock

World Clock tells the story of the 1970s and 1980s in East Berlin, weaving together personal experiences with world events: a young psychologist feels her freedom curtailed by the social conditions of the time and repeatedly asks herself what is ‘normal’ and why the ‘normal’ often strikes her as so alien. Is it an echo of the Nazi era? Or a reflection of the GDR with its norms and constraints, that sense of confinement? Can therapy change the world, and what does this question have to do with her own background? In her search for direction, she looks at her own life through the eyes of others – when she meets Magda, who smuggled children out of the Jewish ghetto during the war and, many years later, works with autistic children; whilst working at Herzberge Hospital, when she unexpectedly encounters an old school friend in the psychiatric ward, who is a patient there; or at a counselling centre, where she explores the personal scope for change together with families. Time and again, it becomes clear just how deeply the political permeates the private sphere: personal biography becomes a magnifying glass for collective history.

"What fascinates me about World Clock is the gentle, warm tone with which the right to privacy is defended." – Katja Petrowskaja