Basis-Film Verleih

A short film by Ula Stöckl, with Grischa Huber and texts from "Hyperion" by Hölderlin: "I would like to show you a free land, a land full of beauty and full of soul and say: save yourself there!"

Edda Chiemnyjewski, a freelance press photographer and single mother living in 1970s West Berlin, is confronted with the fact that "a cook has no time for affairs of state". She also fails to find a market for the project she has been working on with her women′s photography group that seeks to document the city. While from today′s perspective the city, which becomes one of the film′s protagonists, looks like post-war Berlin, little has actually changed as regards the precarious existence of free-lancers. With a heavy dose of self-irony Helke Sander, who also plays the leading role, tells of a divided life in a divided city.

The unemployed machinist Alfred "Scheff" Schefczyk moves from Württemberg to West Berlin full of hope, where he finds a job as a transporter. There, however, he despairs at the seemingly insurmountable dependency structures and the lack of solidarity among his fellow sufferers. The rent in the workers' hostel is raised disproportionately, but nobody wants to mess things up with the landlord or janitor. At work, piecework hours are tightened, but nobody wants to go on strike, and when they do, they are quickly crushed by the management's tactics. When Scheff tries to mobilize against the dismissal of one of the delegates, he finds only one worker willing to sign. "Dear mother, I'm fine," he nevertheless writes on a postcard.

A strike for better wages puts machine fitter Dieter Wittowski in financial difficulties. This upsets his plans for the future and brings his wife a step closer to self-realization, as she now accepts a more responsible job against his will. There are also disagreements with his father, whose blacksmith business he describes as a supplier for mass sales.

This feature film describes the labor dispute of a piecework crew in a large German industrial company and its workforce against the background of the "September strikes" in Germany.

Two fugitives in contemporary Iran encounter citizens across the country, all wounded by the same corrupt government and all united in their willingness to help the pair survive.