BLACK BERLIN BLACK – UNITED POLYPHONIC BLACK EYES ON BLACK BODIES Film

Germany, Mozambique, and South Africa – THE HOMES WE CARRY portrays a family spread across three countries. At its center is Afro-German Sarah, who travels to Southern Africa with her daughter Luana. Her father lives here, and Luana’s father is also expecting them. Luana is supposed to have a different relationship with her father, her grandfather, and her family in Mozambique and South Africa than what was possible for Sarah as a child. Because, at that time, a world was falling apart – her father Eulidio recalls the almost forgotten history of Mozambican contract workers in East Germany.

20,000 Mozambicans worked hard in East Germany and were ultimately cheated out of their wages. Despite the significant contributions made by the contract workers to the (East) German reconstruction, their story is not part of the German cultural memory, with corresponding exclusionary consequences for the protagonists of this story and their families. „When Sarah, the daughter of the Mozambican contract worker, talks about her experiences as a Black child in East Germany after the fall of the Wall,“ says director Brenda Akele Jorde, „she speaks for many Afro-German children who felt very uncomfortable in their own skin and struggled with their Blackness for a long time. Like many others, Sarah eventually understands that being Afro-German is not a contradiction, not wrong or unwanted, but rather an enrichment and a wonderful gift. Showing the story of Sarah’s family means making Afro-German identity visible and emotionally comprehensible across generations.“

THE HOMES WE CARRY is Brenda Akele Jorde’s documentary debut and her final project at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. THE HOMES WE CARRY has since been invited to numerous competitions and festivals, including DOK Leipzig 2022, the Festival International de Films de Femmes de Creteil 2023, Achtung Berlin Festival 2023, Bolzano Film Festival 2023, Freiburger Filmforum, and Sehnsüchte – International Student Film Festival 2023.