If you have a minute to spare, I would like to tell you about a remarkable new film.
Better still, if you have 15 hours 36 minutes to spare, I would urge you to see it.
Having this week spent a mere three and a half hours in the company of the characters so indelibly etched by director Edgar Reitz (…), I would hazard that HEIMAT (…) is the biggest and the most ambitious film project ever undertaken with major commercial backing.
It is, without any sense of the adhesive pejorative, “made for television” and will be shown on that medium later in the year. But it hasn’t a trace of the cloth-eared, muffled quality that so often mars the hybrid television film. It is sharp, crystalline and concise. (…)
Reitz directs with a velvet glove, slipping effortlessly (…) from colour to black-and-white, coaxing from his enormous cast performances that spring naturally to life.
David Castell in: THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 10. Februar 1985