Heimatweh

HEIMATWEH turns the Greek-Turkish population exchange into a human story of uprooting, grief and homesickness. Starting from the simple idea that people were traded as if they were goods, the documentary follows the pain left behind by forced migration and the longing for a homeland that cannot be returned to. More than two million people were affected when Greeks from Anatolia and Turks from Greece had to leave their homes. HEIMATWEH traces the shock of separation, the break in family continuity and the emotional weight carried by descendants; today, the film notes, one in five in Greece and one in fifteen in Turkey are said to descend from this uprooting. It shows how a resettlement built on ethnic and religious principles created misery on both sides. The film places those events within the wider history of the 20th century, where massacres, expulsions and nation-state thinking reshaped lives and identities. It underlines that religion and nationality became combat terms, and it connects past trauma to conflicts that still smolder between Turkey and Greece today. As an award-winning documentary, HEIMATWEH has been recognized at festivals in Loutraki, Cyprus, San Francisco, London, Rotterdam, Toronto and elsewhere. HEIMATWEH stands as a sober reflection on memory, displacement and wounds that time does not fully heal.