If the past is a foreign country, then a river runs through it, all the way to the sea of the present.

SOURCES OF LIFE (Quellen Des Lebens) begins four years after the end of WWII. It has taken this long for a soldier to find his way home to Germany after being a prisoner of the Russians. Dyspeptic, dehydrated from dysentery, and denture-less, not only is his anatomy dislocated, but his domestic situation as well.

Apart from the children he left behind, there is a child he never knew about and his wife has shacked up with his sister.

Determined to restore some semblance of his past, he reopens a pottery factory and begins to manufacture garden gnomes and builds a decorative dwarf dynasty.

SOURCES OF LIFE is a sprawling saga that spreads over three generations (and three hours running time), part historical observation, part satirical insight.