Rated Especially Worthwhile
Film Evaluation Authority's (FBW) assessment of the film
»Willi Heckmann was a musician. He played accordion, sang and was popular with everyone. Klaus Stanjek likes to remember his uncle, the stories he told, the good mood he spread. Only later in life does Stanjek learn that Willi spent eight years of his life in a concentration camp. The reason: Willi Heckmann was homosexual, is said to have taken advantage of small children. He was described as "degenerate". Even after 1945 Willi had to hide his sexuality, his true self. The rumours of paedophilia persisted, as did the feeling of not being accepted. For Klaus Stanjek, who always adored and loved his uncle, all the incomplete and contradictory memories of the family are reason enough to go on a search for clues himself. And so Stanjek researches the life of Willi Heckmann. He makes use of old photos showing Willi at a young age, beautifully coiffed, soft sensitive facial features. But he also montages other shots into the film. Willi in a concentration camp, shaved bald, face empty and without life, an accordion in his arms. Because it was the music that never let Willi give up. Apart from the personal history of his uncle, the film also reflects the history of homosexuality in the times of the Third Reich, the persecution of innocent people, the exclusion of the different, which, according to the law, was continued in West Germany until the 1990s by paragraph 175. ... "Sounds from the Fog" is an immeasurably important film against forgetting the crimes committed against people who did not conform to the norm. A filmic warning against forgetting and for humanity.«
Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung (FBW)