It is not often that a film about an event in 1992 is so poignantly topical. That was when a group of some 300 right-wing radicals set fire to an asylum seekers' centre in Rostock. Miraculously, no one died then. But it did scar many for life. Among them the director of Wir Sind Jung, Wir Sind Stark. Filmmaker and son of Afghan refugees Burhan Qurbani was too young to understand it all, but says in his director's statement that that was when he first experienced what it was like to be a foreigner, to be unwanted. In Wir Sind Jung, Wir Sind Stark he examines how it could have come to this and shows the riots from three perspectives.
In the mostly bleak and stark black-and-white film, tensions quickly mount between the inhabitants of Rostock, a city of some two hundred and forty thousand people, and the refugees who have to live in dire conditions. From a young rioter, a refugee and an ambitious local politician, we follow the developments. And we see how someone slips from problem youth to Nazi activist. But also how a career politician has to navigate between head and heart, between conscience and opportunism.
It needs little explanation why this film is so crucial right now.
Unfortunately, it will be shown only once on Tuesday 27 October at the Ketelhuis in Amsterdam in a collaboration with the Goethe Institute.
Read here more about time and ticket sales
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