With Schattenland Volker Koepp and his long-time cameraman Thomas Plenert take us on a trip to the north-east of Poland to Masuria - probably the best known landscape of former East Prussia. Encounters with people who appear to be stranded away from the tourist areas of Masuria: farmers who use the short summers in the supposed idyll to wring grain from the barren soil. Ukrainians who were forcibly relocated after the Second World War and who moved to their old homeland after Poland's accession to the EU.

The ‘Kurische Nehrung’ is a promontory between the Baltic Sea and the Kaff, whose northern part belongs to Lithuania, while the south is Russian territory. This documentary feature depicts the landscape, the differences between the two countries, the opinions of the people and the German roots some of the inhabitants have.

Controlled in turn by Austria, Romania and Russia, Czernowitz was once a cultural (and highly cultured) melting pot with a Jewish population comprising about half its total 150,000. These days, it’s quieter, smaller, less diverse, and again a source for exodus–though now for economic rather than political reasons. Among those journeying back to explore their roots and visit family burial sites are the U.S.-based writer Norman Manea, actor Harvey Keitel (whose segs are the least engaging), a Berlin cellist, and two middle-aged Viennese sisters. Their visits are variably painful or pleasant, provoking meditation on the concepts of home, native language and belonging.