Munich Film Festival in 1984. The entire project had taken over five years to complete. While making Heimat, Reitz had become interested in developing a series of love stories with the working title of Men and Women. However, in October 1985, Reitz decided to make these tales the basis of Die Zweite Heimat (). The film follows the character Hermann as he leaves to study music in Munich and meets new friends, who are all following their own dreams. Running at over 25 hours, Die Zweite Heimat took over six years to write and production lasted 557 days, between 1988 and 1992. The cast comprised 71 leading actors, 310 supporting actors and 2,300 extras. The film's soundtrack also became the longest soundtrack ever produced. Films Heimat Heimat, the original series, premiered in 1984 and follows the life of Maria Simon, a woman living in the fictional village of Schabbach. It was filmed in and around the village of Woppenroth in Rhein-Hunsrück, a rural region of Germany to the west of the Rhineland-Palatinate. Subtitled Eine Deutsche Chronik — A German Chronicle, it consists of 11 episodes running in total to 15 hours 24 minutes of screen time. The film spans 1919 to 1982, and depicts how historical events affect the Simon family and the community in which they lived. At the start of each episode, Karl Glasisch narrates the story so far over photographs by Eduard Simon. The digitally remastered version merged some of the episodes together, resulting in seven episodes instead of eleven. No material was cut. Die zweite Heimat (Leaving Home) Die zweite Heimat (literally "The Second Heimat"; English title Heimat 2) (subtitled Chronik einer Jugend — Chronicle of a Youth) followed in 1992. It is set during the socially turbulent years of the 1960s and depicts how Maria's youngest son Hermann leaves his rural home and makes a new life for himself as a composer in Munich. Hermann is a musical prodigy whose teenage romance in 1955 with 26-year-old soul-mate Klärchen was considered scandalous by his conservative home village. It resulted in her being expelled and coerced to never contact him again. Hermann felt crushed, vowing never to love again and to leave his village forever. He arrives in Munich at age 19, overwhelmed and with no place to stay. He finds a private room available in a month, leaving the deposit with a flamboyant Hungarian woman. His