Babylon 2

Samir, who arrived here himself from Baghdad as a child in the early 1960s, takes up the search for the new generation and finds communicative, self-assured individuals who – in ‘half and half’ mode – are at home in their own intermediate worlds. Many of them have found a chosen home in the hip-hop scene, in ice hockey, in the media and at the university…

The approach to making this flickering group portrait is just as varied as the life stories themselves: different narrative levels – interviews, archival footage, dream sequences – are brought onto the same plane using split screens, allowing the multi-layered nature of identity to find expression, too. Using an alter ego, Samir deconstructs the “foreign rule” to which foreigners are particularly – and ultimately completely – subject. Babylon 2 offers the viewer a provisional home in this intermediate world and celebrates roots and wings.

Jenny Billeter (Translation BMP Translations)