The invisible band

Two referenda held in Schleswig 100 years ago determined today's border between Denmark and Germany. This film takes the viewer along the only 70-kilometer-long/43-mile-long borderline between Flensburg and Sylt while portraying unusual people, the descendants of those who voted in 1920. Fascinating helicopter footage shows the landscape from above while ever following the invisible borderline. The border-flight is accompanied by an historic biplane from the days of the referenda. 

The film is a journey into the past. After the end of World War I, the new border was, for many years, the scene of national resentment and the respective exclusion of each other's cultures. Only after the liberation of Denmark from Hitler's occupying forces in 1945 did the German-Danish borderlands became a positive model for European minority policy, demonstrating coexistence. The Bonn-Copenhagen declarations of minority rights and the Schengen Agreement for open borders allowed the German-Danish border to gradually be rendered invisible.

Given the current resurgence of nationalism in Europe and the erection of new border fences, the northernmost German border between the Baltic and North Seas has become an "Invisible Band" of neighborliness and a touchstone for freedom, security and justice in Europe.