Zu weit weg
Together with his parents and his older sister Isa, almost twelveyear-old Ben has to leave his home village because Niederkirchbach will soon be eaten up by a huge brown coal opencast mine. His only consolation is the Düren football team, for which he, a gifted striker, has already registered. In his new school, however, Ben is stamped as being an outsider. The fact that the other “newcomer”, a Syrian refugee boy named Tariq, belongs even less to the class does not comfort Ben. Especially since Tariq unintentionally competes with him on the football field with his “moves”, his football tricks. But then Ben, who secretly wants to go to his old village, discovers Tariq all alone at the train station. At first Tariq denies everything, but later Ben learns that the Syrian boy lives in a children’s home. His parents are still in a camp in Turkey, his brother Kheder has disappeared during the flight. Now Ben’s jealousy is blown away. He senses how the Syrian refugee boy feels and shows Tariq his greatest secret: the abandoned home village.. (Festival information, SCHLINGEL 2019)
Distances can concern many things, not only geography. Being pulled from his roots, eleven-year-old Ben discovers the beauty of friendship by connecting with a young refugee from Syria and this boy’s pain. This is a story of change, migrations and tolerance of universal value, being beautifully and tenderly told in a child friendly manner.
The film makes us think of our place in life when it comes to home, relationships, environment and how the dignity of human beings does not depend on religion, culture and identity. Your value does not depend on your position in the family, in the classroom or on the soccer field but rather how you perceive yourself as an important part of something bigger.