Awards

WINNER Best Teleplay, Baden-Baden TV Film Festival (1986)
WINNER Golden Nymph, Monte Carlo Television Festival (1986)
WINNER International Press Award, Monte Carlo Television Festival (1986)
WINNER Red Cross Award, Monte Carlo Television Festival (1986)

Selected Screenings

The New York Jewish Film Festival (2008)
Riverside Theater London (2005)
Austrian Film Festival, Lincoln Center, New York (1993)
Film Forum, New York (July 1988)
Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival (1987)
San Francisco International Film Festival (1987)
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (1987)

Listen: NPR's Fresh Air Feature on the Axel Corti's Where to and Back Trilogy

Synopsis

New York City 1940. A ship arrives filled with exhausted refugees desperate to begin a new lives. Alfred “Freddy” Wolff (Gabriel Barylli) a young Austrian Jew dreams of starting anew in the mythic American West, but instead struggles to overcome the piercing alienation of immigrant life. In Brooklyn, an émigré community tries to recreate their European café life in a local coffee shop, but nothing can disguise their feelings of loneliness and profound loss.

Freddy’s new world of refugee acquaintances includes Popper, a prize-winning photographer who now takes passport photos for a dollar, Frau Marmorek, a woman rendered mute by her internment in a concentration camp, and Lissa, the daughter of a delicatessen owner, with whom Freddy dreams of traveling to Santa Fe. This absorbing picture, lovingly photographed and acted, examines the hopes, doubts, and memories of exiles.

Critical Acclaim

“A totally absorbing picture, which examines with complete assurance the hopes, doubts, and memories of immigrants who have no place to call home.”
– Amy Lawrence, Los Angeles Reader

“Freddy’s personal story becomes a way of evoking an entire milieu: the community of immigrant Jews struggling to survive in an America that doesn’t really want them. Corti and Troller have a sure hand with the nuances of this émigré community – the delusions, the face-saving lies, the world-weary generosity, the ache of memory, the longing for love that is impacted like an abscessed tooth.…It shows us hard, complicated lives and does so with compassion rather than sentimentality, ironic awareness rather than sarcasm or rude humor.”
– John Powers, L.A. Weekly

Credits

Director: Axel Corti
Scriptwriter: Georg Stefan Troller
Cinematographer: Gernot Roll
Editors: Rolf Ballmann, Werner Swossil, Lutz Kleinselbeck

Alfred “Freddy” Wolff: Gabriel Barylli
Lissa: Doris Buchrucker
Dr. Treumann: Peter Lühr
Ferry Tobler: Johannes Silberschneider
Mrs. Shapiro: Monika Bleibtreu
Popper: Gideon Singer
Dr. Bauer: Heinz J. Klein
Frau Bauer: Tilly Breidenbach
Feldheim: Ernst Stankovsky
Frau Marmorek: Dagmar Schwarz
Ameranth: Leo Mazakarini
Binder: Joachim Kemmer

Home Use DVD: $29.95 Does not include Classroom or Library Use Rights or Public Performance Rights. More Information	Classroom/Library Use DVD: $195 Does not include Public Performance Rights. More Information
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Links

God Does Not Believe in Us Anymore (Where to and Back, Part 1)

Welcome in Vienna (Where to and Back, Part 3)

A Woman's Pale Blue Handwriting

Biography of Axel Corti

Biography of Georg Stefan Troller

Download a Press Kit (PDF)

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Santa Fe

Part 2, Where To and Back
Austria, 1985, 110 Minutes, B&W, German with English Subtitles

Directed by Axel Corti
Written by Georg Stefan Troller

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Public Exhibition formats: Beta, DVD