Film

The middle East in the Berlinale international film festival-focus

Maids in bourgeois Lebanon, fighting on the streets of Aleppo, nonfree young people in Saudi Arabia – films from the Arab region to form a regional emphasis in the program of this year’s Berlinale.

The architects in Beirut’s swank apartment houses design, plan, not to the needs over. In each apartment you will find a chamber for a maid. Because who in Lebanon prides itself on – and these are not a few – is in personnel. Four Million Inhabitants, 200,000 Of Maid. Young women from the Sudan, from Ethiopia, Bangladesh and the Philippines, the cleaning, kids hats and much more to do. Nicely should you be a hard-working and above all, invisible. For the best maid are the one that you did not notice, is a neat lady right at the beginning by Maher Abi Samras forceful documentary” Makhdoumin” (“A maid for each). She says it is not in Arabic, but in French, in the language of the well-to-do.

Modern-Day Slavery

A modern Form of slavery is a durchorganisierter trade with government involvement. In their home countries and recruit subagents the girls in Beirut through a catalogue of agencies. Her income is pathetic, right, you have hardly, and having a return is not provided. Often the family has some Land sold to the cost of travel in Lebanon to pay for. Maher Abi Samra tells the story of how it all works – objectively, without moralizing. An Agent and his co-worker, explain your business, give us an insight into their languid life: discussions with customers, customer complaints, customer requests. The girl you never see. Although many others Lebanese, they employ, ashamed somehow for, a servant-girl to have. Even friends of the Director. When one has once a girl killed. A therapist has him and his wife, then the guilt is taken: the suicide could have been personal reasons had. But: Almost every week takes in Lebanon as a maid life.

Rendezvous in Saudi Arabia: in an Emergency, even on the Playground

Ten days of Berlinale, this is like a multiple round-the-world time lapse. But one does not just stopped there, where it’s nice and peaceful. Several short visits this year in the Arab world and the Middle East. The insights gained are varied, the cinematic variety is amazing. Between fiction and reality meanders “Akher ayam el-madina” (In the last days of the city Tamer El Said, the restless search of a filmmaker to themselves and their history in Cairo shortly before the Arab spring. The Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni is always also an activist. “Junction 48” is a to the rhythm of the Rap vibrating the work, the discrimination of the Arab Israelis visually stunning accuses. And from Saudi Arabia, not just as a Filmland is known, comes a wicked Comedy in Bollywood style, “Barakah meets Barakah” by Mahmoud Sabbagh. The young Director is told with a light touch of the absurd difficulties, before which a man and a woman, who Like each other and want to see. In the Public is as good as nothing, but Necessity is the mother of invention. The young Generation has a nose full of all of the regulations in Saudi Arabia, is the message.

Dreams and trauma

Avo Kaprealian was in 1986 in the Syrian city of Aleppo was born as a descendant of Survivors of the genocide of the Armenians. From the balcony of the parental apartment in the Midan quarter, he has the everyday life on the road and the näherrückenden civil war documents and, as the Champ became firmer, with the camera up in the apartment withdrawn. His pictures of the family, your dealing with power outages, snipers and Geschützfeue and their fear, to flee and leave everything behind to have, he mixes in his Film “Manazil bela Abwab” (Houses withour doors”) with archival images and fictional daydreams of the genocide of the Armenians and compresses the Familientrauma to a cinematic charge.

Desperate mother, a fundamental quest of the daughter of

And then there’s this movie “Route d’Istanbul”, in Belgium begins in a hospital in Istanbul ends. Not a documentary but a feature film about a Belgian Doctor, the daughter is lost. Elodie, just of age, has quietly and unnoticed, an inexplicable transformation undergone, is a convert to Islam and Islamistin become. One day you simply no longer home, in this beautiful house on the river. The Belgian police can Elodies mother did not help. But she wants her child back and follows her, initially accompanied by a friend, then alone to the Syrian border and the Belgian order in the kriegsnahe Chaos catapults. “She has voluntarily done, remember,” says her friend. Why, of course you are never in this disturbing Film and is left with unanswered questions. As Elisabeth, the mother, finally at the bed of the severely injured daughter, and they say sounds like: “I have found my destiny.”