Welcome in German

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Movie
Original title Welcome in German
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2014
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Carsten Rau ,
Hauke ​​Wendler
script Carsten Rau,
Hauke ​​Wendler
production Carsten Rau,
Hauke ​​Wendler
music Sabine Worthmann
camera Boris Mahlau
cut Stephan Haase

Willkommen auf Deutsch is a German documentary by Carsten Rau and Hauke ​​Wendler . Using the example of the accommodation of refugees in the Harburg district , against which protests are being formed in several places, he critically questions the welcoming culture in Germany. The film premiered on October 28, 2014 at DOK Leipzig . Its theatrical release was welcome in German , of the top 10 of the most commercially successful cinema documentaries managed according to the survey of the German Federal Film Board (FFA) in 2016 in Germany, on March 12, 2015.

content

Using the example of two storylines that are told in parallel, the film takes a calm, predominantly observational look at how the administration and the local population deal with refugees who arrive in the Harburg district in northern Lower Saxony in late summer 2013. In addition, the film accompanies protagonists for nine months in the towns of Appel and Tespe , who represent many communities in Germany that are confronted with rapidly growing numbers of asylum seekers at the time.

A single mother with six children from Chechnya was quartered in the municipality of Tespe . The film follows the family, who is constantly threatened with deportation under the Dublin Agreement , in their difficult everyday life and shows how some German neighbors support them courageously. After the mother of the Chechen family was placed in a psychiatric hospital due to mental health problems , the eldest daughter in the family had to look after her five little brothers alone. Is the family allowed to stay in Germany in the end or will they be deported?

In the village of Appel, the second location of the film, there are just 400 inhabitants. There are no shopping opportunities and hardly any infrastructure, but 53 asylum seekers are to be accommodated here. The administration of the district and the residents of Appel are overwhelmed by the situation. The citizens of Appel claim that they have nothing against refugees. Nonetheless, dissatisfaction is spreading in the village, which leads to the founding of a citizens' initiative that is creating a massive mood against the accommodation of male asylum seekers in particular. Does Appel have to take in asylum seekers in the end or can the citizens' initiative prevail with its protest against the administration?

For nine months, the filmmakers accompanied the various groups in their everyday life, showing that the reality of the welcoming culture and refugee policy in Germany is more nuanced and complex than the two opposing poles “Refugees welcome” and “Foreigners out”.

criticism

When the film was released in theaters, it received an overwhelmingly positive response in the press: DIE ZEIT judged it to be an “excellent documentary”. The filmmakers “open a thoughtful discourse on the asylum issue by countering fears and prejudices with examples of empathic helpfulness,” said the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The film service judged somewhat more critically, the film “traces the processes between defense and prescribed integration” and tries “to do justice to all sides, but thereby unnecessarily mitigates the explosiveness of the issue of whether and how German asylum policy must change ".

Awards

In 2015, the film received the rating of "particularly valuable" from the German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) . In the same year he was nominated for the prestigious German Film Critics Award.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Welcome in German . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2015 (PDF; test number: 149 591 K).
  2. ↑ FFA Filmförderungsanstalt | Funding decisions. Retrieved August 15, 2018 .
  3. ^ "Welcome in German": A village is cheating . In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed on August 15, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Lisa Schnell: In the small world of Mr. Prahm . In: sueddeutsche.de . July 21, 2015, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed August 15, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Michael Ranze: Welcome in German. Filmdienst , 5/2015, accessed on April 11, 2016 (short review).
  6. ↑ Welcome in German. German Film and Media Rating (FBW) , accessed on May 11, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Association of German Film Critics. Accessed on August 15, 2018 .