Films

MACONDO

Film Info

Austria 2014 Director: Sudabeh Mortezai

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MACONDO

Synopsis

Ramasan has a lot of responsibility for an 11-year-old. In traditional Chechen society, he is now considered the man of the house in charge of his mother and two younger sisters. His world is now centered in Macondo, a tough ethnic neighbourhood in the industrial suburbs of Vienna.
Ramasan speaks German much better than his mother Aminat, and he often translates for her regarding school and government welfare matters. Aminat is still coping with having lost her husband, fleeing Chechnya and trying to make ends meet as a single mother and foreigner in a new society.
Ramasan's confined world is disrupted when Isa, his father's war buddy, moves into the low-income housing complex. Isa pays his respects to Aminat and her children, giving them the watch and a family photo his dead friend always carried with him.
This encounter awakens Ramasan's interest in his father. He seeks Isa's company, but the outsider remains secretive about the past. Isa gradually opens up and a bond evolves between them that helps young Ramasan face and overcome his worst fear. Isa could become a new, much more human, father figure than the boy's abstract memory of the war hero at the family altar. But when Aminat begins to warm up to Isa, conflicted Ramasan feels the need to protect the image of his dead father…

Cast & Crew

Director

Sudabeh Mortezai
Producer

Sabine Moser, Oliver Neumann
Screenwriter

Sudabeh Mortezai
Director of photography

Klemens Hufnagl
Main Cast

Aslan Elbie, Kheda Gazieva, Ramasan Minkailov
Editor (Cut)

Oliver Neumann
Sound

Atanas Tcholakov
Production Design

Julia Libiseller
Costume Design

Carola Pizzini

Director's comment

MACONDO is the unofficial name of a settlement on the outskrits of Vienna that has been housing refugees over the last 60 years. Over 2,000 people from 20 different countries, from Chile to Vietnam, and nowadays mainly from Afghanistan, Somalia and Chechnya co-exist there in cheap social housing. When I first heard about this place I was intrigued and wanted to find out more about the people who live there and their life stories. I visited the settelement many times, talked to inhabitants and did documentary research that included organizing filmmaking workshops for the children and teenagers. The children's lives and stories especially touched me. Maybe because I have a story of migration myself. I was 12 years old when my family left Iran and we settled down in Austria. The experience of growing up between two cultures is something I know intimately. Children from migrant and refugee families often have to grow up much too fast, take on too much responsibility and function as mediators between their parents and the new society they now enter. This is a big chance but also a heavy burden on a child. These issues were essential when I started to develop a story and write a fictional screenplay based on a number of real-life stories and incorporating many documentary elements I came across in reserach. I continued this documentary-style approach during the casting and shooting: almost all the actors are non-professionals and it is their first time in front of a camera. They are refugees, social workers, counselors etc. in real life. They never read the screenplay or learned any dialogue. I worked with improvisation as a principle. The story took shape while we filmed chronologically, allowing the actors to develop and grow with their characters during the process.