„Another great performance by Gottfried Richter. A film about my parents. And the parents of my East German friends… I like the character of this Peter Bittel. I reject his political views, but I know exactly where this comes from. Like all my characters – no matter how much they are worth rejecting – I meet them with sympathy. Even Gottfried Richter, who is of course anything but a Putin-fan, has easily put himself in this role. By the way, this „Dresden“ film was shot in Hamburg – in the apartment of my cameraman Steve Kfoury.“ — Sven Johne

Dear Vladimir Putin, 2017
4K video, Russian with English subtitles, 17:30 min.
ed. 5+2 a.p.

In Dear Vladimir Putin, Peter Bittel prepares for his ‚big gig‘: a speech to Vladimir Putin about things personal and political, a monologue in Russian around 18 minutes long. The retired civil-engineer practices reading his script, edits and rejects or hones individual passages, and sometimes despairs in the face of the pronunciation and grammar of the language. It is a text like a confession, which oscillates between political camps and challenges us to question our own favorite political standpoints, to discard them or to buttress them.