Films by Axel Schmidt

Germany 2012, 89 min
by Peter Heller (c/o filmkraft)

500 billion US dollars in a half-century - and no end to the aid is in sight. Prominent "do-gooders" of the entertainment industry such as Bono, Bob Geldorf, Angelina Jolie and Madonna, pressure the politicians to pump more development aid into Africa. An ever-increasing number of African economic experts and sociologists have begun to criticise this flood of aid. Our documentary film project follows the voices of protest that are being raised in Africa. Working in cooperation with scholars and journalists from West and East Africa, we will attempt to present the problems of development aid from an "African" perspective.

2012, 89 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken

ARBEIT HEIMAT OPEL profiles six young people, aged 16 to 19, who began their apprenticeships as industrial mechanics at the Opel plant in Bochum, Germany in 2009. While they must learn to cope with a new phase in their lives, the start of their professional careers and approaching departure from the security of their parental homes, Opel itself is being sucked deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of the international financial crisis and facing ever-increasing economic pressure. We follow Jerome, André, Sinan, Tim, Marius and Marcel, with all their hopes and fears, through this period of radical change; we are introduced to their dreams for the future as well as their worries. They stand at the threshold of a professional life whose future is already uncertain. At the same time, ARBEIT HEIMAT OPEL contrasts the everyday lives of the Plant II apprentices with GM and Opel’s fortunes on the world stage on two seemingly unrelated levels. Despite their distance both in physical and in media terms, the two levels repeatedly intersect and come into contact with one another, connecting global strategies with local and personal life plans – and vice versa.