hausbank

Weil die Hausbank hier ein bisschen die Finger im Spiel hatte…

Die Grenze als Hauptperson um die sich alles dreht, die alle Aufmerksamkeit fragt. Und die dafür, was sie eigentlich ist, viel zu viel ins Leben von zu vielen Menschen eingreift. Die Grenzen sind lächerlich und doch (wieder) DAS Ding im 21.Jahrhundert, die die einen beschäftigt und mit Sinn ausstattet während sie die anderen quält, in die Irre führt und zur Verzweiflung bringt. Seltsam altmodisch.

IDFA: “When you don’t have papers in this country, you suffer,” as one young Nigerian woman in the Netherlands knows firsthand. When she arrived here, human traffickers forced her to pay back a lot of money, and she was then tricked into prostitution. All she can say from her asylum seeker’s cell is, “I’m not a criminal, but they treat me like garbage.” Jacqueline van Vugt traveled to Africa to observe the borders that lie between Nigeria and the European Union – between Nigeria and Niger, and on to Burkina Faso, Senegal and further to the north. At each country boundary, she met countless people dreaming of a better life, and convinced they would find it in the promised land of Europe. That dream exacts terrible sacrifices. Border zones are brutal environments marked by the ever-present threat of violence, exploitation and exhaustion. Men risk their lives on the high seas in plastic boats, while women are condemned to work for a pimp. One woman’s arm is tattooed with her address in case she gets lost or dies. The closer the migrants get to Europe, the more the dream loses its sheen. And anyone who makes it all the way will get nothing like the reception he had hoped for.

BIN AN DER FRONT, EMPFANG IST SCHLECHT, ICH MELD MICH SPÄTER.

Basset und Ossama sind die Hauptdarsteller in diesem Film über Homs und den Widerstand dort. Sehr viele unvergessliche Szenen, wie etwa der Weg durch mit geschlagenen Löchern verbundenen zerbombten Wohnungen oder jener Szene wo Ossama aus dem Krankenstand zurückkommt (er wurde angeschossen) und aus dem singenden Widerstandsnest plötzlich ein Gewusel aus waffenputzenden jungen Männer geworden ist, die bereit sind “an die Front” zu gehen. Oder jener Szene wo man ganz mit Basset an eben jener Front ist und dann das Handy läutet, weil die Schwester anruft um zu fragen wies läuft.

IDFA: Filmed between August 2011 and August 2013, this is a remarkably intimate portrait of a group of young revolutionaries in the city of Homs in western Syria. They dream of their country being free from President Bashar al-Assad and fight for justice through peaceful demonstrations. As the army acts ever more brutally and their city is transformed into a ghost town, the young men become armed insurgents. The protagonists are two friends: Basset, the charismatic 19-year-old goalkeeper of the national soccer team whose revolutionary songs make him the voice of the protest movement, and the 24-year-old media activist and cameraman Ossama. The close-up camerawork takes the viewer right into the group. Scenes of lively protest parties make way for panicking civilians on the run, followed by grim battles in a deserted city, and rising numbers of fallen loved ones. Basset’s a cappella protest songs are the only soundtrack, apart from the “silence, interrupted only by birds and bullets.” From time to time, the director makes a comment in voice-over: “The world is watching how we are getting killed one by one, while it remains silent as the grave.”

pro action film