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"Never change a winning team" would be an appropriate motto for Korean-born Sung-Hyung Cho and the Berlin-based production company Flying Moon Filmproduktion after their surprise hit with her documentary Full Metal Village which won the Hessian Film Award and the Max Ophuels Award in 2006 and has been seen by over 180,000 cinemagoers. So, this year has seen Sung-Hyung and producer Helge Albers coming together on a new collaboration entitled Endstation der Sehnsuechte about ex-pat Koreans returning home after 30 years of living and working in Germany to spend their retirement in a purpose-built "German village". "Full Metal Village and the new film both have a lot to do with Sung-Hyung´s own biography [she was born in Korea in 1966 and has been living in Germany since 1990] and the way she has experienced being between the two cultures," Albers explains. "Endstation, though, is even more focused on her own biography and shows how these villagers see themselves being between two cultures." In the 1960s and 1970s, many Koreans came to work in Germany as nurses and miners and are now at a stage in their lives where many decided to return to their homeland to spend their old age. A local politician Kim Du Kwan on the island of Namhae, some 400 kilometers south of Seoul, came up with the idea of establishing a "Dogil Maeul", a "German Village", to make the ex-pats and their German spouses feel ‘at home’. He had relatives of his own in Germany and visited Korean communities there in 2001 to present the concept. Similar settlements have also been built with an American or Japanese theme since 2003. "The film raises the question of how you can live between two cultures which are so different and how far you can or want to let go of your own culture," Albers continues. "There are also elements which go over and above this German-Korean relationship and where you have another level talking about identity and cultural misunderstandings in a very bizarre and amusing manner."