Films by Britta Strampe

Germany 2024, 91 min
by Daniel Abma

When parents can no longer fulfil their duty of care, the children’s world often falls apart. Nothing stays as it was. Suddenly it is no longer mum or dad who are in charge but the youth welfare system. Daniel Abma followed a youth housing group in a rural area over several years, showing professional educators who want to give five boys between the ages of seven and fourteen what they need most urgently, day by day: security, orientation, a home.The documentary focus is not on the children but on those who take the parents’ place. They sometimes remind us of Don Quixote tilting at the windmills, for there is a diffusion of responsibility between school, youth welfare services, and absent mothers and fathers. Words fail when adults do not keep appointments, when those in charge capitulate in the face of racist bullying and propose some “time out” – for the bullied boy – in a psychiatric facility. It would be easy to denounce these mechanisms, but that is not the point Daniel Abma wants to make. His observation, both emphatic and reserved, looks questioningly into the gaps in the system – with those who are in danger of falling through and those who try to fill them with affection. He makes us suspect that the answer is not to close all the system’s gaps. It is people who are there for other people and take responsibility. [67 DOK Leipzig, Luc-Carolin Ziemann]

2018, 30 min
by Esther Niemeier

A true story about a war and the tragic impact it has on the lives of three people.In his early twenties Addai leaves his entire life behind and moves to Syria to help victims of the civil war. At first he is assigned kitchen duty together with Ilias. Addai writes to his mother: “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” Two years later Addai’s mother receives a letter from prison. Ilias has been sentenced for terrorism by a German court. He wants to meet her and writes: “One thing you have to believe me, we went there with good intentions.”