We are young, we are strong addresses the violent xenophobic events against an Asylum Seekers Reception Center (ZASt) in Lichtenhagen, a district of the city of Rostock, on the Baltic Sea, a city that belonged to the former East Germany. The center was over-capacity and many refugees (many of them Romanians / Gypsies) were camping nearby.
The film approaches the narrative from three points of view: that of a group of disenchanted young people after German reunification, unemployed and idle, who adhere to neo-Nazi slogans; that of a disenchanted Social Democratic official who does not know very well what to do in the face of the conflict and that of a group of Vietnamese residents who lived in a monoblock located in front of the Center (some already with jobs and who certainly felt threatened) and focused almost all the action throughout one of those fateful days in August 1992. And all in oppressive and disenchanted black and white fully justified and with various formal achievements.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this film by Burhan Qurbani is the confusion that is generated at times about the violence that is brewing and its actors and the skein of motivations that move a group of young people to slide down the slope of xenophobia and fascism (depression, losses, unemployment, boredom, prejudice and even romance), the existence of an ever more convinced and violent leader that galvanizes him and the almost casual way of moving from that somewhat diffuse nebula to direct action. "Spontaneous" drift that also included less radicalized Rostock villagers who bowed to the excesses.
The film approaches the narrative from three points of view: that of a group of disenchanted young people after German reunification, unemployed and idle, who adhere to neo-Nazi slogans; that of a disenchanted Social Democratic official who does not know very well what to do in the face of the conflict and that of a group of Vietnamese residents who lived in a monoblock located in front of the Center (some already with jobs and who certainly felt threatened) and focused almost all the action throughout one of those fateful days in August 1992. And all in oppressive and disenchanted black and white fully justified and with various formal achievements.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this film by Burhan Qurbani is the confusion that is generated at times about the violence that is brewing and its actors and the skein of motivations that move a group of young people to slide down the slope of xenophobia and fascism (depression, losses, unemployment, boredom, prejudice and even romance), the existence of an ever more convinced and violent leader that galvanizes him and the almost casual way of moving from that somewhat diffuse nebula to direct action. "Spontaneous" drift that also included less radicalized Rostock villagers who bowed to the excesses.