Question: How long is the Director's Cut of "Das Boot"?
About the article "Das Boot", section "Criticism by novelist Buchheim".

Candidate passages:
  150 minutes (1981, 1982) Theatrical  209 minutes (1981) unreleased  300 minutes (1984, 1988) BBC mini-series  208 minutes (1997) Director's Cut  293 minutes (2004) "Das Boot: The Original Uncut Version"  
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The characteristic lead melody of the soundtrack, composed and produced by Klaus Doldinger, took on a life of its own after German rave group U96 created a remixed "techno version" in 1991.
The title theme "Das Boot" later became an international hit.
The official soundtrack features only compositions by Doldinger, except for "J'attendrai" sung by Rina Ketty.
The soundtrack ("Filmmusik") released following the release of "The Director's Cut" version omits "J'attendrai".
Songs heard in the film, but not included on the album are "La Paloma" sung by Rosita Serrano, the "Erzherzog-Albrecht-Marsch" (a popular military march), "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" performed by the Red Army Chorus, Heimat, Deine Sterne and the Westerwald-Marsch. 
Several versions of the film and video releases have been made: The first version to be released was the theatrical 150-minute (2½-hour) cut, released to theatres in Germany in 1981, and in the United States in 1982.
It was nominated for six Academy Awards (Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, Sound (Milan Bor, Trevor Pyke and Mike Le Mare), Sound Effects Editing, and Writing).
The film was partly financed by the German television broadcasters WDR and the SDR, and much more footage had been shot for the film than was shown in the theatrical version.
A version of three 100-minute episodes was transmitted on BBC Two in the United Kingdom in October 1984, and in Germany and Austria the following year.
In 1988 a version comprising six 50-minute episodes was screened.
These episodes had additional cutback scenes summarising past episodes.
Petersen then oversaw the editing of six hours of film, from which was distilled "Das Boot: The Director's Cut", 209 minutes long (3 hours, 29 minutes).
Released in 1997, this cut combines the action sequences seen in the feature-length version with character development scenes contained in the mini-series.
This release also provides better sound and video quality.
Petersen originally had planned to release this version in 1981, which for commercial reasons was not possible.
The Director's Cut was released to cinemas in Germany on 11 December and on 4 April 1997 in the U.S.
In addition to the "Director's Cut" DVD, a Superbit version, with fewer additional DVD features but a higher bit-rate (superior quality), was released by Columbia Pictures.
An uncut miniseries version, running 293 minutes (four hours, 53 minutes), was released to DVD on 1 June 2004, as "Das Boot: The Original Uncut Version" with enhanced video and audio quality.
It omits the cutback scenes of the 1988 television broadcast and is therefore shorter.
On 14 October 2010, the 208-minute "Director's Cut" was released on a German-language Blu-ray Disc in Europe.
It was released in the United States on 5 July 2011.
The shortest version begins an evening in a French nightclub.
The longer begins in a car that is driving to the same place, and several drunken sailors are pissing at the car, in which the U-boat commander and the guest reporter are sitting.
The commander doesn't care, but later the new German-Mexican volunteer officer makes complaints about it.
This complaint is also cut in the short version, hence the introduction of this officer becomes very short.
The long version was released for at least cinemas in Sweden at the time.
(Long time before 1997.)
Das Boot (, German meaning "The Boat") is a 1981 German epic war film written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, and Klaus Wennemann.
It has been exhibited both as a theatrical release and as a TV miniseries, and in several different home video versions of various running times.
"Das Boot" is an adaption of the 1973 German novel of the same name by Lothar-Günther Buchheim.
Set during World War II, the film tells the fictional story of U-96 and its crew.
It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country.
The screenplay used an amalgamation of exploits from the real , a Type VIIC-class U-boat.
Development for "Das Boot" began in 1979.
Several American directors were considered three years earlier before the film was shelved.
During the film's production, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real" U-96" and one of Germany's top U-boat "tonnage aces" during the war, and Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on , served as consultants.
One of Petersen's goals was to guide the audience through "a journey to the edge of the mind" (the film's German tagline "Eine Reise ans Ende des Verstandes"), showing "what war is all about".
Produced with a budget of 32 million DM (about $18.5 million), the film was released on September 17, 1981, and was later released in 1997 in a director's cut version supervised by Petersen.
It grossed over $80 million ($ million in prices) worldwide between its theatrical releases and received critical acclaim.
Its high production cost ranks it among the most expensive films in the history of German cinema.