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)