Macondo

by Sudabeh Mortezai

Russia, Austria

Director : Sudabeh Mortezai 
 
Script : Sudabeh Mortezai

Photographer : Klemens Hufnagl 

Editing : Olivier Neumann 

Sound : Atanas Tcholakov

Music : Christine Cham, Christopher Khoo

Actors : Ramasan Minkailov, Aslan Elbiev, Kheda Gazieva, Rosa Minkailova, Iman Nasuhanowa, Askhab Umaev 

Production : Freibeuter Films 

Distributor :  

Year : 2014

Screening : 2023

DCP, Color, 98 mn, OV german, arabic SUBFR

Official Competition Berlinale 2014

At 11, Ramasan is already a grown man under his little boy’s appearance. As refugees in Austria with his mother and two sisters, he tries to replace as best he can his father who has died in Tchetchenie... the arrival of Issa, an old friend of his father’s, is going to disrupt his day-to-day life. “My idea was to illustrate the key-word “integration” from the refugee viewpoint. When they talk about integration, especially in the media, it’s seen from the outside: the migrants are the subject of debate, but they never get the chance to say what they think. My aim, equally because as a child I went through this process of migration and inte- gration, was to present the situation from the inside... I was also interested in what the psychologists call “parentification”. It deals with this weight often borne by the children in an immigrant family: they are forced to grow up too quickly and take on responsibility beyond their age and maturity. They learn the language of the host country more quickly than their parents, so in fact it’s they who act as translators and even mediators between their parents and the new society around them.” Sudabeh Mortezai