In-between World

A film by
CANA BILIR-MEIER

Camera: LICHUN TSENG
Poetry/Voice-Over: AULIC ANAMIKA
Performer: SABOURA NAQSHBAND, BASIRA BEUTEL-BIYIK,
KIRAT SARKARIA
Sculptures: AHU DURAL
Music: JULIAN WARNER a.k.a. FEHLER KUTI
Sound Editing: ROBERT KROOS
Poster Design: TALYA FELDMAN

In 1986, the Muhammad Iqbal Monument was built in Munich, commemorating the Muslim-Indian poet, philosopher and thinker of the independent post-colonial state of Pakistan. Iqbal, who received his doctorate from the LMU in Munich in 1907, stayed in Bavaria for many years around the turn of the century and died in Pakistan in 1938.

In 1962, Gani Bilir came to Kiel as a so-called “guest worker” – the year the recruitment agreement was signed between the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey. The filmmaker Cana Bilir-Meier discovers his wage slips, which are visible in the film, in the personal family archive of her grandmother Vehbiye Bilir. They are a document of the inhuman working conditions of the migrant workers and their lack of recognition as citizens in Germany, because while German workers rose, the wages of foreign workers always stayed the same.

Different places, moments and memories in history are interwoven in the film to create a unique decolonial view of our time. Storytelling and remembrance politics in Germany is aimed at a white dominant society.

With colorful sculptures made of wood, metal and clay by the artist Ahu Dural, which appear in the film, own moments are created in which monuments are created, supplemented and dissolved.

Memories and commemorations of an 'In-between World' in which diverse perspectives take part, as described in the poem by the writer Aulic Anamika.

In the family archive, the filmmaker also finds two of her grandfather's flying birds drawn on a slide - so-called migratory birds.

Three sisters: Saboura, Basira and Kirat gather at these historic places of Bavarian history, like the Bavaria and the Iqbal monument. They approach these narratives with sculptures and their biographies. As poets, children of migrant workers, thinkers, they stand for the many resistant stories and biographies of the "In-between World".