Filmvorführung "EUROPA PASSAGE"

In the organizer's words:

We all know them, the people who sit in front of the drugstore, supermarket or church and beg. Usually in the same place every day for several months until they suddenly disappear again.

But who are these people, where do they come from and where do they disappear to? What makes them sit on the street and beg in all weathers? Filmmaker Andrei Schwartz explores this question in his documentary EUROPA PASSAGE, which follows the lives of a group of Roma who commute permanently between Hamburg and their Romanian home village of Namaiesti over a period of five years.

Due to a lack of work in Romania, they earn a living for themselves and their children by begging in Hamburg. They sleep under bridges and in parks, in constant fear of being discovered and evicted. The city authorities regard them as "voluntarily homeless" and they are denied access to emergency programs even in winter. Every few months they go home, back to their children and relatives. In order to understand why they leave their loved ones behind for an income of a few euros a day, the film accompanies them back to their home village of Namaiesti. We witness how harsh the conditions are there and that this migration is also a consequence of the fall of communism, since which there have been neither jobs nor prospects in the region.

The two main protagonists, Maria and Tirloi, are the only ones who have managed to build a bit of normality over the years. They form the bridge between the two worlds: He has a job, she still goes begging. They are able to bring their granddaughter to live with them, who is the first in the family to learn to read and write. But their rise has its downsides - it leads to envy and conflict with the other villagers and to an estrangement between the two. Because - as director Andrei Schwartz sums up - "everything has its price".

A film about people who hardly have a chance but still try to make the best of it. And about the price they have to pay for it.