THE THIRD BROTHER
(GER: Der dritte Bruder)

Wondering about her father’s lack of sense of family, the filmmaker searches for her father’s mother, who disappeared in the Holocaust. In the process, she discovers a family story from the Third Reich to divided Germany, in which three brothers were torn apart by political ideologies: Walther emigrated in time, Hermann made a career under the Nazis and even defended a war criminal in Nuremberg, whereas Otto, “the third brother” and the grandfather of the filmmaker, stayed in Dresden, suffering under the Nazis and later under the Communist regime. Why did he tell his sons their mother had died in a sanatorium? And how could he have denounced people himself in the GDR, after his Jewish wife had been denounced by neighbors for having visited a movie theater?
In confronting her father, the filmmaker tries to overcome decades of silence and, in the process, to understand at what point in the past her father’s sense of family fell by the wayside.
 
A Documentary by Kathrin Jahrreiss

Screenplay & Director: Kathrin Jahrreiss
Camera: Marcus Winterbauer
Sound: Oliver Stahn
Editing: Nicole Schmeier, Nicole Winterbauer
Music: Julia Klomfass
Sound mixing: Jasmin Lenssen, Alexi Topalis
Producers: Roswitha Ester & Torsten Reglin

An Ester.Reglin.Film production

Production funded by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW

Distribution: Real Fiction Filmverleih
Release-Date: May 2025

Festivals
2024 FFCN Film Festival Cologne
2025 DOCUTHA International Filmfestival
*Best International Film

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