The Day of the North Germans - DVD

Content: The idea is as simple as its implementation was elaborate: for one day, the very normal life in northern Germany is captured by selected people commit their everyday lives accompanied by cameras. After two years of intensive planning, 121 protagonists were actually accompanied by 100 camera teams on May 11, 2012. This resulted in 700 hours of raw footage, which was edited together in a total of 7000 working hours and under the influence of 1,000 liters of coffee and 200 bars of chocolate to a 900-minute long broadcast. The result is The Day of the North Germans, which has now been released in its complete form on DVD.

Spread over a total of six DVDs, the viewer can accompany a fisherman, a baker, a team of radio presenters or a kindergarten teacher at work, can watch young Bundeswehr soldiers during a field exercise, look over the shoulder of a beekeeper or watch an athletic bus driver doing his morning exercises between two trips. You can accompany actor Sven Walser as he prepares for filming, celebrate Hamburg's harbour birthday with Karl Dall and Carlo von Tiedemann or attend a crab-pul competition. Whether ordinary citizens or celebrities, the everyday or the unusual, following the day of the North Germans is tremendously entertaining and, using this region as an example, shows very vividly how varied life is in Germany.

Although the protagonists certainly do not behave one hundred percent naturally in the presence of the camera teams, the whole thing comes across as very authentic. Without accompanying off-commentaries and obviously staged scenes, the view of the colorful kaleidoscope with all its facets can unfold really well. Admittedly, there are many aspects that could well be described as typically North German. Someone who paddles to the office by boat in a big city like Hamburg or who is regularly on the move on an island in terms of weather forecasting and who, in the course of time, has come to terms very well with the idiosyncrasies of the islanders, is rather less likely to be imagined in Hesse or Bavaria. But despite (and also because of) these regional peculiarities, this TV experiment is a lot of fun even if you as a viewer are not from the North yourself.

The Day of the North Germans is a very nice TV project that really cries out to be repeated in other regions of the country. The DVD box set allows you to relive this colorful, funny, moving, original and just in its very ordinary moments special day over and over again. Absolutely recommendable!

Picture + Sound: The picture and sound quality of Day of the North Germans is on a good level for documentary material. The image is very clean, the colors look very natural, the sharpness can convince especially in the quieter moments and only shows minor weaknesses in faster camera pans. The stereo sound remains largely unspectacular, but captures the atmosphere of what is shown very well in most moments. Good!

Extras: On the first DVD is still a nearly 20-minute long Making of, which offers quite an interesting insight into the conception and creation of the project. In addition, the box is still an extensive booklet that introduces all the protagonists and lists an exact sequence of the individual hours.

Conclusion: The Day of the North Germans is a very entertaining project that offers a very comprehensive, charming, sometimes very amusing or even insightful look at life in northern Germany. For one day, 121 people, celebrities as well as ordinary citizens, were accompanied by the camera and from the resulting 700 hours of footage, over 900 minutes worth seeing were then edited together. The result is extremely engaging, even if you are not from northern Germany yourself. A very worth seeing experiment, which one would like to see in this form for other parts of Germany as well. In addition to the 900 minutes of film material, the DVD set offers an interesting making of and an extensive booklet. All this makes this box: absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp