‘The Long Way Home’ – October Meeting

Surrey Border Movie Makers were delighted to welcome back local film maker editor and scriptwriter David Fairhead to talk about his dramatized documentary film ‘The Long Journey Home’. David has over 40 years’ experience in film making. We were also pleased to give a warm welcome to Iain Philpott the films cameraman who also attended the evening with David.

David explained that the ’The Long Journey Home’ is a true story about two families who were united in marriage and divided by war and how the families dealt with this.

The story was inspired by the house in which David lives. After moving into his house in 2002 David became inquisitive about the previous owners, he made enquires with his neighbours and was given the name of a previous owner Betty Adams.

In 1938 Betty left the house to marry a German called Rudolf Jebens, sadly Rudolf dies and in 1946 a struggling Betty together with her daughter Jutta returned from Germany to live in the house she had grown up in.

Many years later Jutta made an emotional return visit to her former home, and she began to unfurl the story of her life, this together with information from Jutta’s brother Dieter and Davids neighbours enabled the story to evolve. The documentary followed Jutta’s emotional return to Germany where she visited places she remembered as a young child.

The film started out as a short trailer in 2011 and was then developed into the start of a longer film in 2014, the lengthy and complicated procedure of editing was completed in 2025 after the extra scenes filmed in Germany were added, this developed into the 50min. emotionally absorbing film which we can watch today.

Several members of Surrey Border Movie Makers were involved in filming some of the local scenes for the film.