Le Heim
Asylum Reality in Germany

I think this is a clandestine prison. Only that we're not safe here at all. They take you, put you in prison, you have no right to go here or there, you have no right to work. They give you food, so you eat, and then you sleep. Life cannot go on like this.

Alassa, Burkina Faso

The home for asylum seekers Waldsieversdorf is difficult to find. 60 kilometers east of Berlin, it is situated completely isolated in the middle of the woods. In the former NVA (National People's Army) barracks, there are living 18 adults and three children at the moment. The next bus stop is a four-kilometer-footpath through the woods away, the next supermarket a 12-kilometer-march. The 'residence obligation' turns any moving into a risk for the residence permit status.

...

Leona Goldstein talks to refugees from Irak, Vietnam, and Cameroun about their hopes, before they fled to Germany, about the realities that awaited them there, and about their personal forms of dissent.

Le Heim
Asylum Reality in Germany

Germany 2005
16 min, DV, subtitles in English, French and German
writer, director, camera: Leona Goldstein
editing: Leona Goldstein, Thilo Schmidt

in cooperation with Refugee Council Berlin Brandenburg and the F.I.B., Refugee Iniative Group of Brandenburg.

© ZAPANKA 2006