Blue Red Gold

Alaa M. and her husband came to Germany in 2015. They have built a new life in Berlin, their twins were born in exile. Alaa is a self-confident woman in Berlin who has to fight many prejudices. She does not accept that people judge her by her appearance.

In the wake of the war in Syria, Alaa M. and her husband fled to Egypt after 2013. After Abdel Fatah El-Sisi came into power by a coup d’état, the problems for refugees increased there. It became more and more difficult to find work, so Alaa and her husband decided to go to Germany. From Egypt to Italy she and her husband went by a small boat with 400 other people on it. They changed the boat several times. “If you got up, you couldn’t sit down again,” explains Alaa, that’s how crowded it was. After the dangerous journey, they arrived in Catania, Sicily. There their personal details were recorded. They knew that it could be difficult to apply for a residence permit in Italy to continue their journey, so they did not wait for their papers to be received.

They arrived in Austria by plane and from there to Munich. From Munich they were brought to Leipzig, and they were assigned an apartment in a nearby village. Alaa reports several incidents of discrimination she had to experience there. After more than a year, they came to Berlin, where after some time they found an apartment and work. Alaa talks about the experiences of discrimination that she had to make in her everyday life in Leipzig and Berlin, and about her application procedure in a Berlin bank, where she was confronted with racism.

produced by: Daybreaker Film

directed by: Khaled Mzher

producer, DoP, editor: Khaled Nawal