FORD FATHERS - GUESTS IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY

The first generation of Turkish guest workers in Germany is reaching retirement age. Their original intention was only to stay for a few years in order to earn some money for a better life at home in Turkey. Then a few years became a few decades, which in turn became the rest of their lives. For the first generation of guest workers, Turkey remained a byword for all that was familiar and enjoyable about life. Germany was solely a place of work. A place where circumstances forced them to move with their families. 


These fathers were scarcely aware that their daughters had been born and grew up in this “everyday country” and that they identified with Germany. Their aim was solely that their daughters would not attract undue attention in this foreign country. No longer working, they are now forced to face up to this reality.
Which is the ideal moment for the daughters to ask their fathers a number of questions.

This documentary film portrays three first-generation Turkish guest workers through the eyes of their daughters. The central theme is the internal struggle of the daughters, for whom it was difficult not to be allowed to reach their full potential in Germany, but who had no wish whatsoever to go to Turkey. It was the inability and unwillingness of their own fathers to communicate with them that left them in such a limbo. Three young, educated and independent women – including filmmaker Zuhal Er – who like going to discos but wear headscarves. Together with the fathers, they look back to the 1960s, arriving in Cologne once again to join the endless production lines at the local Ford works.  Standing once again on the threshold of great dreams, they begin to gain an insight into the circumstances that shaped their dreamless present. In the film, the daughters begin to understand their fathers. The film focuses on a very personal confrontation between filmmaker Zuhal – one of the daughters featured – and her father. This theme is universalised when her best friends talk about their relationships with their own fathers.


A story about a lack of communication, but also of an energetic desire to live in the here and now.

 

Director: Achim Scheunert & Zuhal Er
Camera: Jörg Adams
Sound: Andrä Klaukien, Daniel Hallmann
Editor: Marc Schubert
Music: Thomas Bücker
Speakers: Dieter Schiffer, Bodo Primus, Sibylle Kuhne, Hans-Gerd KILBINGER
Production Manager: Uwe Herpich (WDR), Rolf Bremenkamp
Producer: Birgit Schulz
Commissioning editor: Gudrun Wolter
Production: Bildersturm Filmproduktion
in cooperation with WDR (2011)
Director: Achim Scheunert & Zuhal Er
Camera: Jörg Adams
Sound: Andrä Klaukien, Daniel Hallmann
Editor: Marc Schubert
Music: Thomas Bücker
Speakers: Dieter Schiffer, Bodo Primus, Sibylle Kuhne, Hans-Gerd KILBINGER
Production Manager: Uwe Herpich (WDR), Rolf Bremenkamp
Producer: Birgit Schulz
Commissioning editor: Gudrun Wolter
Production: Bildersturm Filmproduktion
in cooperation with WDR (2011)

 


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