LICHT OHNE SCHATTEN

A Film About Consciousness, Death—and the Courage to Live Without Fear

LICHT OHNE SCHATTEN is one of two New Dakota documentaries to receive a theatrical release and successfully travel the festival circuit. The film premiered in cinemas in 2024. Yet its journey was never intended to end at the cinema doors.

Following the express wishes of Dr. Pim van Lommel and, above all, of the late German author Sabine Mehne, New Dakota decided to make the film available worldwide and accessible to everyone. This was not simply another form of distribution. It was the fulfilment of the film’s purpose: to open an honest and serious conversation about near-death experiences, consciousness and our fear of dying.

At the heart of the film is Sabine Mehne.

After being diagnosed with cancer in 1995, the physiotherapist and systemic family therapist underwent a near-death experience during a life-threatening phase of her illness. What she experienced profoundly changed her understanding of life and death. For the next 25 years, she worked to bring near-death experiences out of the realm of silence, stigma and easy judgement.

As an author, lecturer and co-founder of Netzwerk Nahtoderfahrung e.V., she became one of Germany’s most important public voices on the subject. Her book LICHT OHNE SCHATTEN became a bestseller. But Sabine Mehne did not seek certainty where none could be given. She sought language for an experience that had transformed her life—and wanted to help others approach death with less fear.

Her personal testimony meets the research of Dr. Pim van Lommel, the film’s central scientific protagonist.

KEY FILM DETAILS

ORIGINAL TITLE
Licht ohne Schatten

THEATRICAL RELEASE
2024

PRODUCTION
New Dakota

WRITTEN, DIRECTED & PRODUCED BY
Adnan G. Köse

PROTAGONISTS
Sabine Mehne
Dr. Pim van Lommel

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Christine Wagner
Holger Menzel

EDITED BY
Adnan G. Köse

CAMERA SYSTEMS
Sony FX6 · Sony FX3

FILMED IN
Hesse, Germany
Arnhem, the Netherlands

Van Lommel is a Dutch cardiologist who spent 26 years working at Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem. After repeatedly encountering cardiac-arrest survivors who reported vivid experiences from periods of profound unconsciousness, he began systematically investigating the phenomenon.

His prospective study followed 344 successfully resuscitated cardiac-arrest patients across ten Dutch hospitals. Sixty-two patients—18 percent—reported a near-death experience. The research examined the circumstances in which these experiences occurred, possible medical and psychological explanations, and their lasting effect on those who survived. Its results were published in the internationally respected medical journal THE LANCET in 2001.

The study did not claim to deliver final proof of life after death. It did, however, bring near-death experiences into a serious medical and scientific context—and raised a fundamental question that continues to challenge conventional assumptions:

Can human consciousness be explained entirely as a product of the brain?

LICHT OHNE SCHATTEN does not turn this mystery into a spectacle, nor does it replace unanswered questions with easy certainty. It listens.

The film brings Sabine Mehne’s lived experience into dialogue with Pim van Lommel’s decades of clinical observation and research. Between them emerges an intimate portrait of a courageous woman, a scientific inquiry into the nature of consciousness and a quiet confrontation with the one experience every human being shares—but few are willing to face.

Sabine Mehne died on 30 November 2022 in the presence of her family. Her voice, her work and her determination to change the way we speak about death remain.

LICHT OHNE SCHATTEN is part of that legacy.

A film about dying that ultimately speaks about how we choose to live.

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WATCH THE FULL FILM

LETZTE ZUFLUCHT - LAST REFUGEE

A Film Made Before the World Looked

Before the images of the great refugee movement of 2015 came to dominate Europe’s daily news, LETZTE ZUFLUCHT had already begun listening to the people behind them.

Filmed in 2014, the documentary was the first German theatrical film of its kind to address the rapidly growing refugee crisis from within the lives of those who had arrived in Germany. It did not wait until displacement became a political headline. It entered a world that still remained largely hidden from public view.

At the centre of the film are people who escaped war, persecution and violence in Syria, Somalia, Nigeria and Bosnia. Some found temporary shelter at a refugee accommodation centre in Dinslaken, a town in Germany’s Ruhr region. Far from their countries, separated from their former lives and uncertain about their future, they speak about what they have lost, what they fear—and what they still hope for.

Among them is a Syrian family whose new life in Germany remains overshadowed by concern for those left behind. The film also encounters Khadra Sufi, who fled Somalia as a child and later became a successful television presenter and an ambassador for the United Nations Refugee Agency in Germany.

LETZTE ZUFLUCHT does not reduce its protagonists to victims, statistics or symbols of a political debate. It gives them the space to speak for themselves.

KEY FILM DETAILS

ORIGINAL TITLE
LETZTE ZUFLUCHT

INTERNATIONAL TITLE
LAST REFUGE

FORMAT
Digital / Full HD

GENRE
Documentary Feature

COUNTRY / YEAR
Germany / 2015

RUNTIME
65 minutes

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY
Adnan G. Köse

NARRATION / VOICE-OVER
Adnan G. Köse

PRODUCED BY
Adnan G. Köse

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Christine Wagner

EDITING
Adnan G. Köse

PRODUCTION COORDINATION
Thorsten “Ippi” Ippendorf

PRODUCTION
New Dakota Studios

PROTAGONISTS
Khadra Sufi
Dan Carlo Guidetti
Atilla Alagöz
Rosie Hannemann
Pastor Gerhard Greiner
Katja Hantel

FUNDED BY
Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth

IN COOPERATION WITH
UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe, Bonn

WITH THE SUPPORT OF
UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency
ARRI Film & TV Services

WORLD PREMIERE
49th Hof International Film Festival, 2015
Documentary Competition

THEATRICAL RELEASE
Germany, following its festival premiere

LANGUAGES / SUBTITLES
German and original languages / Partially subtitled in German

Their voices are joined by those of volunteers, social workers and local organisations trying to provide protection and human connection in a system already approaching its limits. What emerges is a portrait not only of displacement, but also of the people who refuse to look away.

The film was produced with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and in cooperation with UNHCR Germany. Its world premiere took place in the documentary competition of the 49th Hof International Film Festival in 2015, followed by a successful theatrical release.

Seen today, LETZTE ZUFLUCHT has become more than a contemporary documentary. It is a record of the moment immediately before Europe fully understood the scale of what was approaching—a film that recognised the human reality before it became history.

Ten years later, wars continue. People continue to flee. And the questions at the heart of the film have lost none of their urgency:

What does it mean to leave everything behind?

When does temporary shelter become a new home?

And what responsibility do we carry for those who arrive at our door?

LETZTE ZUFLUCHT is a film about people seeking safety—and about the moment when another human being decides whether to see them.

WHY THIS FILM IS AVAILABLE IN FULL

More than ten years have passed since LETZTE ZUFLUCHT premiered at the Hof International Film Festival and was subsequently released in German cinemas.

The film belongs to another moment in time — and yet the reality it documented has not become history.

War, displacement and forced migration continue to shape the lives of millions of people. Europe is still struggling with questions of responsibility, borders, integration and humanity. The political debate has become harder, the divisions deeper, and behind every statistic there are still individual lives, families, memories, fears and hopes.

That is why I have decided to make LETZTE ZUFLUCHT available here as a complete film, free of charge and accessible worldwide.

Not because a film can provide simple answers to one of the most complex questions of our time. It cannot. But documentary film can preserve something that political arguments and headlines too often lose: the human perspective.

LETZTE ZUFLUCHT was made before the refugee movement of 2015 became one of the defining political and social issues in Europe. Seen today, the film offers an opportunity to look back at that moment — and perhaps to understand more clearly how much has happened since.

Above all, I want the film to remain accessible because empathy begins with seeing the individual before judging the issue.

For that reason, more than ten years after its theatrical journey began, LETZTE ZUFLUCHT is opening its doors once again.

FULL FILM — WATCH FREE

Adnan G. Köse
Writer, Director & Producer