"Haus Kummerveldt", the award-winning mini-series by FH Dortmund graduate Lotte Ruf, is now available in the Arte media library. The Franco-German cultural broadcaster has secured the rights until mid-2026, making the series freely accessible to a wide audience for the first time.
What is it about? "Haus Kummerveldt" is set at the end of the 19th century. Luise von Kummerveldt lives in a moated castle in Münsterland. Her goal is to become a writer. However, the German Empire does not allow this for women - and the scope for female action in this patriarchal society is tighter than the corset that women have to wear at the time. The story - devised by director Mark Lorei and author Cecilia Röski - is peppered with black humor and morbidity. The producer of the series is Lotte Ruf. The web series was the practical part of her bachelor's thesis in the Film and Sound study program at Fachhochschule Dortmund. Lotte Ruf has since founded her own company and is doing her Master's degree at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf.
Audience award and sustainable production
With "Haus Kummerveldt", Lotte Ruf won the Audience Award of the prestigious First Steps Award for young filmmakers, among others. "We make films for the audience, so I'm particularly pleased when lots of people like the story," she said after the award ceremony. With the series, she wanted to reach young people in particular and get them excited about history by telling it in a modern way.
And it succeeds. The magazine ELLE speaks of a "young and trendy style" with which the series artistically liberates itself from any clichés of historical series. The author in the Berliner Zeitung calls the series "wonderfully curious and pleasantly serious".
In her final thesis at Fachhochschule Dortmund, Lotte Ruf dealt with the climate-neutral production of films, among other things. For example, "Haus Kummerveldt" was filmed almost exclusively on real locations and not in the studio, where the construction of sets consumes a lot of resources. In terms of technology, for example, energy-saving LED lamps were used, making the otherwise frequently used diesel generators superfluous for this production. And the catering was also made from regional products without disposable tableware.