Keyword Development Aid

The film is a reportage showing the help of workers from the GDR in the industrial reconstruction of Syria. We witness the friendly relationship between workers from both countries, who are jointly involved in the construction of the cotton spinning mill in Homs. In impressive pictures the exoticism of the environment and the mentality of the Syrian hosts is shown. At the same time it becomes clear that the workers from the GDR become 'ambassadors of the GDR' through their collegial behaviour and good work.

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.

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