There is something almost contradictory about Hiddensee. They say Hiddensee is the kind of place that stays with you: once you have been, you either find yourself returning year after year, or you never set foot on the island again. To some, the island feels like an escape from the rest of the world, yet it has always been shaped by everything happening beyond its shores. Artists came for its freedom, outsiders came looking for a different way of living, and generations of visitors turned the small Baltic island into a place onto which they could project their own idea of paradise.

Annekatrin Hendel’s Hiddensee takes this idea and slowly pulls it apart. The film moves freely between decades and generations, weaving together different stories and perspectives. What initially feels like a journey into the island’s past gradually becomes something much more contemporary. Old conflicts echo in the present, and the seemingly distant political tensions of previous generations begin to feel unsettlingly familiar. Hiddensee becomes less a backdrop than a lens through which to observe a changing Germany.

Hendel’s black-and-white imagery gives the documentary a timeless quality. Beaches, houses, faces and the sea become almost dreamlike, while the stories being told are often anything but.

And perhaps that is what makes the film linger. Hiddensee does not simply ask why so many people have been drawn to this island. The film celebrates the island as a place of freedom and artistic expression while simultaneously questioning how long such a refuge can remain untouched by the forces shaping the world beyond its shores.

At 119 minutes, the documentary takes its time, but that patience suits the subject. This is less a conventional historical documentary than an atmospheric journey through memory, politics and the people who have tried to make Hiddensee their own. Beautiful, reflective and quietly unsettling, Hiddensee leaves the island behind long after the film itself is over.