Sabine

Sabine Willmann

Director, author & media educator

Motivation for the trip

The last three years have been so eventful that I hardly had time to think.

Between working independently as a filmmaker and lecturer and dividing my free time between my sick mother and my own family, I lost my self and at some point I asked myself what goals I still wanted to pursue. We had already thought about the PCT. In 2017 my mother died and I, as one of three children, held her hand as she took her last breath. It was a profound experience and the pain of losing my beloved mother is still very great today.

I would never have thought that there would be a parallel to Cheryl Strayed's motives for the PCT. We saw the film about her life in 2015 at the best open air in the region (organized by KinoKult e.V. in Ludwigsburg) together with our daughter and one of her close friends. That's when our plan to walk the PCT was born. The film evening under a starry sky and in pleasant temperatures was unforgettable. Barely 10 months later, our daughter's good friend, this young man, took his own life. At this time, in 2016, my mother was already deteriorating rapidly. Then my brother gave me Cheryl Strayed's biography and I was catapulted back into the world "out there".

The shocks and upheavals of the past few years, the political situation in many countries and the fanatical actions against people who are different and just want to stay as they are, violence against homosexuals, violence against women, circumcision, restrictions on freedom through travel bans, non-existent voting rights and election manipulation, restricted right to freedom of expression and much more in the name of a higher belief or a higher idea, the "no time for time" and my own inner conflict, are now leading me even more strongly to the PCT. Not as a path to salvation, but as a path to self-reflection and as a path to simplicity, to reduction, away from the brainwashing of our excessive consumer world. After years of involvement in groups, clubs and, above all, in film politics in my professional association, the Documentary Film Working Group (AG DOK), as head of the Southwest region with the aim of paving the way for documentary film, I have now given up my positions. And: For decades, I had become the guardian of family treasures when family members died. Before throwing something away, the boxes came to me first. I myself collect a lot of things and it was time to swap the mountains in the apartment, garage and basement for mountains in nature. Just like Beethoven said: "Look at the beautiful nature and calm your mind."

(Portrait photo by Stephan Haase)