What has changed + Fig Tree
Event 25. October
(Info about next event 22. November below)
What has changed
Short Film – 16 min., 2022, Hebrew with EN subtitles
Director: Salomon Chekol
Shai, an Ethiopian Jewish soldier in the Israeli army, returns home for Passover with a welfare food package for his family, only to discover that his father is keeping a secret. A quietly powerful short film about what it means to be of Ethiopian descent while navigating Jewish religious traditions in Israel in the 2000s.
Fig Tree
Feature Film – 93 min., 2018, Amharic with EN subtitles
Director: Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian
Addis Ababa, 1989. Mina is 16, Jewish, and about to leave Ethiopia for Israel, where her mother awaits their reunion. But this plan leaves behind the person she loves most: Eli, her Christian boyfriend, hiding in the woods to evade conscription into Mengistu Haile Mariam's army. A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Ethiopian Civil War.
Our October edition of “Transit” explores the history of Ethiopian Jews in Israel – a migration that remains little known both within and beyond Israel's borders. For generations, Ethiopian Jews dreamed of returning to Jerusalem. In the 1980s and 1990s, the State of Israel carried out complex operations to bring tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to their ancestral homeland. Upon arrival, they were met with an exoticized image of the "lost tribes" of the Bible – and soon faced racism, discrimination, and the difficult realities of integration. Today, approximately 178,000 Jews of Ethiopian origin live in Israel.
Program
10:00 am – Doors open
11:00 am – "What has changed"
11:20 am – "Fig Tree"
ca. 1:30 pm – Conversation in the foyer
Included with your ticket: a bruschetta or a sfogliata.
Conversation:
Yael Reuveny and Evgenia Gostrer (curators)
with activist Tikva Sendeke and members of the "Fig Tree" production team.
Topic:
The unique history of the Ethiopian Jewish community and the challenges it continues to face
Event 22. November
In Retrospect
Short Film – 15 min., 2025, German with English subtitles
Directors: Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi
Migrant workers built a shopping centre for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 2016, the same place became the scene of a racist attack. In their 15-minute essayistic documentary In Retrospect, filmmakers Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi weave these two historic moments together with West German director Sohrab Shahid Saless’ film Empfänger Unbekannt (1983), revealing with great sensitivity the forces of hatred and racism at work.
The German People (Das Deutsche Volk)
Documentary – 132 min., 2025, German with English subtitles
Director: Marcin Wierzchowski
Marcin Wierzchowski’s documentary The German People accompanies survivors and
bereaved family members of another racist attack – the 2020 attack in Hanau. His
camera stays close to them for four years in the aftermath of the crime, as they grieve
and fight for recognition. Is the German narrative flexible enough? Can it expand to
include the victims of this horrific crime? Does dying in Germany qualify you to belong? Who is allowed to call this country home?
The November edition of our Transit series brings together two films about two of the most serious far-right crimes in recent German history. Although they speak in very different cinematic languages, the films reveal striking parallels. Both zoom in on the crimes and their aftermath while also widening the perspective: They show why these crimes are not isolated incidents, but are deeply embedded in German society and history. Both films raise questions about hatred and racism, home and belonging – while also turning the gaze back on ourselves: What do we, as a diverse society, tell ourselves? How do we remember these events and keep their memory alive?
Program
10:00 am – Doors open
11:00 am – In Retrospect
11:15 am – The German People
ca. 1:45 pm – Conversation in the foyer
Included with your ticket: a bruschetta or a sfogliata.
Conversation
Yael Reuveny and Evgenia Gostrer (curators)
with filmmakers Marcin Wierzchowski and Daniel Asadi Faezi.
Topic
Making films about far-right violence, the films’ protagonists, and the filmmakers’ personal experiences of navigating positions of belonging and outsiderness in Germany.
Language: German
The organisers
The Institut für Neue Soziale Plastik
The film series is presented in cooperation with the Institute for New Social Sculpture. The Institute for New Social Sculpture is an association of Jewish and antisemitism-critical directors, dramaturgs, writers, and artists. Since its founding in 2015, it has developed artistic projects from Jewish perspectives, focusing on contemporary Jewish life and history as well as memory culture and antisemitism. Another key area of its work is advising cultural institutions, independent groups, curators, and artists on issues related to antisemitism.
https://neue-soziale-plastik.de/en/
