'Madgermanes' is what the Mozambican workers once contracted out to East Germany are called
today. At the end of the 1970s some 20 000 of them were sent from the People's Republic of
Mozambique to the GDR to labour for their socialist sister country. After the Berlin Wall fell
almost all of them lost their residency status. Decades later they are still waitingfor most
of their wages to be paid. Birgit Weyhe depicts their search for belonging and a place to call
home caught between two cultures and two states that no longer exist. Based on extensive
interviews she creates three fictitious narrators and transforms their stories into a visual
language that skilfully interweaves African and European narrative traditions.
