Madgermanes

Malte Wandel
Germany 2014 | 53 Min. | OmeU

Nelson Mon­heguete, José Alfre­do Cossa, Aure­lio Timane, Aly Bunaia and Lino Fenias are in a hope­less sit­u­a­tion today. In the 1980s, the five immi­grant work­ers from Mozam­bique worked in the German Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic (GDR). With the end of the GDR, how­ev­er, the con­tract work­ers had to go back to Mozam­bique, where gov­ern­ment offi­cials con­fis­cat­ed any doc­u­men­ta­tion of their work and salary details from them. There­by, the gov­ern­ment prof­it­ed from the con­tract worker’s income by means of money transfers.

Even to this day the gov­ern­ment of Mozam­bique owes them about 74.4 mil­lion US dol­lars of income and 18.6 mil­lion US dol­lars of social secu­ri­ty. Thus, 25 years after their return, there are still weekly protests of the so-called MADGERMANES, who want their money back. The film­mak­er tells the life sto­ries of five men, cre­at­ing an impres­sion of the events and sit­u­a­tions the work­ers went through in the GDR using orig­i­nal archive footage.