Youth program 2023 - FILM WITHOUT BORDERS

„We are the jury“ 

In 2023, pupils (this year it was the 8th grade of the Europaschule Storkow) once again acted as the youth jury for FILM OHNE GRENZEN and selected two films in a one-week workshop with the project managers Anna Faroqhi and Haim Peretz, which they presented as an independent jury to invited school classes at the festival in September.

In the workshop, the young people watched a documentary or feature film every day for a week at the Schukurama cinema in Beeskow that addressed the festival theme of ZUVERSICHT. The main topics were youth and role models, racism, poverty and education. After each screening, there was a discussion about the films, the meaning of the word „confidence“ and the interpretation of it in the respective film.

As a final task of the workshop, the students were allowed to co-curate the festival program: They voted and selected the two „winning films“ for the school cinema program of FILM WITHOUT BORDERS.

The youth jury chose the following films:

„NENEH SUPERSTAR“ (France 2022), Director: Ramzi Ben Sliman

„Schools of the World“ (Germany/France 2021), Director: Émilie Thérond

Film workshops on the topic of „Curriculum vitae“

In 2023, several workshops were held that dealt with the topic of „life course“ in a broader sense.

In a participatory film project, schoolgirl Sham Alfaad told the story of her escape from Syria to Turkey and Greece until she arrived in Germany in 2020. The workshop leaders supported Sham in finding a place for a student internship and worked with her on the applications. Sham was interested in the medium of film. The internship took place in April at a production company in Fürstenwalde and was accompanied by a camera, with Sham also taking pictures and contributing to the documentation.

Sham during her student internship

At the „Am Fuchsbau“ refugee shelter in the Oder-Spree district, our team launched a project to help residents write their CVs. This process was recorded on film, partly by our team and partly by the residents themselves using the cameras. Around 40 CVs and several letters to landlords and employers were created during the project days. Actress Laura Tonke supported the project and read out the CV of Obada Zedan, a trained doctor from Syria, in front of the camera.

Actress Laura Tonke and doctor Obada Zedane read the curriculum vitae of Obada Zendane

The projects were presented to the audience at the FILM OHNE GRENZEN festival. Residents of the hall of residence were invited to the festival. Due to the positive response and high demand, the project will be continued in 2024.

Stabilization

The FIM OHNE GRENZEN continuation program serves to convey film, disseminate the content of the youth projects in the district and to get to know and make contact with new groups and potential participants.

FILM OHNE GRENZEN organized a film evening at the Fuchsbau shared accommodation to get closer to the residents. Around 20 residents from the accommodation, including many children, took part.

Another project, the reading experiment „Kateryna's Story“, took place in the Caritas shared accommodation in Bad Saarow. In a mini-workshop, residents from Ukraine created a short cinematic reading of the escape story of a 14-year-old girl from Ukraine. The participants took to the „reading experiment“ with great enthusiasm and were extremely interested in the technical and acting aspects of working on a film. The translations between German and Ukrainian were done by the participants themselves.

Following this project, the resulting short film was presented to other residents at a film evening in the Caritas GU.

Another film evening with a discussion round for young people with a history of migration and flight was organized at the Storkow Youth Club.