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Programme & Tickets

DEFA Matinee

In the 1980s, more than 400 Namibian children grew up largely isolated in the GDR. After the collapse of the GDR, they were hastily sent back to a newly independent Namibia – with an incomplete education, facing an uncertain future. The Matinee is presenting two films about these children’s fates in the presence of director Lilly Grote.

Documentary Film

GDR

1990

52'

Staßfurt – Windhoek

Lilly Grote, Julia Kunert

DEFA Matinee

Documentary Film

GDR

1990

52 minutes

German

Subtitles:

English

No Premiere

While the GDR is drawing its dying breaths and German reunification is imminent, “The GDR Children of Namibia” are forced to return to Africa at extremely short notice. The film highlights the emotional state of the children and adolescents just before their departure from the GDR and after their arrival in Windhoek. Conversations make their inner conflict palpable: they are looking forward to a possible reunion with their family, but they also leave friends and their home of the past years behind. Can one’s own country become a foreign place?

Philip Zengel

Youth