Berlinale Spotlight – Generation: WASTELAND – So that No One Becomes Aware of It

Muhammad, Mustafa and Aya are among a group of kids living far out on the site of a former barracks. Nobody else lives there anymore. There’s nothing but fields, sheep, wind turbines – and a lot of time. It takes imagination to find ways to pass it. Their families came here years ago to escape various war zones. They have lived in this asylum ever since. Sometimes a bus passes in the distance, reminding them of other people and other ways of life. The long summer holidays drag on. The kids wander through the tall grass, ride their bikes down to the lake or look for scrap copper to sell. Filmed in luminous black-and-white, filmmakers Anne Kodura and Friede Clausz focus their gaze entirely on the way the children see things, managing to get them to reveal in casual conversations their feelings about home and identity. Their parents never appear but are only heard describing their difficult situation in a few spare pieces of voice-over. In order to concentrate on the children’s attitude to life, there are no specifics given about their background, and no dramatisations. A compelling documentary that stays with you long after it has ended.