The Endless Night

West Berlin’s Tempelhof airport in 1962. The airport is socked in by fog and no planes can take off or land. A dozen or more passengers are stranded and have to spend the night in the airport. Loosely connected episodes make up a diverse whole of encounters and conversations – for instance, between a penniless starlet and two shady gentlemen, a farmer from Africa, and an airport employee looking to get married. Also among the denizens of this involuntary soirée are a wife with an Italian lover, a crooked businessman and a Polish jazz band… Will Tremper has created a soap opera with documentary underpinnings. Shot without a finished script over 45 nights, after closing time in Tempelhof’s central hall, with original sound, The Endless Night gels into a realistic portrait of society. It is peopled with believable characters whose often-improvised dialogue seems perfectly in sync with the time. And the director might have been drawing a self-portrait with the character of the businessman in search of money – to make the film without subsidies, Tremper took out a mortgage on his own home.