Andreas Nickl

Caught between German stuffiness and Argentinian religiosity, Madi discovers her own sexuality. Madi and her sister Lucia grow up with their Catholic Argentinian mother and their pragmatic German father. The matriarch Dolores loses herself in clichés while their father August pursues his stereotypical role as breadwinner.

Between the years 1949 and 1990, roughly four million people left the GDR for West Germany. „West“ (adapted from the book by Julia Franck) tells the story of a young mother, who together with her son, leaves the GDR to try for a new beginning in the West. But she discovers she has to undergo more interrogations by the Allied secret services who treat many refugees with the suspicion that they may be working for the Stasi. The Emergency Refugee Centre turns from a place of safety into a cold war location, proving once more that one cannot leave without taking along one’s past. With great personal and political power, „West“ shows the difficulties of daring to start a new life - if the past has taken away all faith.