GDR cameras meet Syrian orphans: a Cold War time bomb ticking across decades.
Director Junge was commissioned by the GDR in the country for the first time in the summer of 1970; his film In Syria auf Montage accompanies German engineers who train workers in the Homs textile factory. Shortly after filming ended, Hafez al-Assad put himself under the dictator. Twenty years later emerged ... the father stayed in the war over a youth club with Syrian orphans in Bad Saarow, whose fathers had died in the Lebanon war and accompanied them to Syria, where they were housed in separate, elite "schools of martyr children". Multi-faceted documents that oscillate between peaceful and tense, hopeful and unsettled.
Direction
Junge's 20-year patience turns footage into devastating time-lapse.
Editing
Jarring cuts between 1970 optimism and 1990's militarized orphan 'elite schools'.
Director
Winfried Junge
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Winfried Junge is better known for the 'Die Kinder von Golzow' series—this is his hidden geopolitical detour.
The 1970 footage captures Homs before Assad's coup and before the city became synonymous with 2010s devastation—archival innocence that stings.
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