Parvis (Benjamin Radjaipour) is young, smooth, stylish and maneuvers confidently between the queer Hildesheim party scene and his liberal, Iranian suburban family home. After he gets caught stealing, he is forced to do community service as a translator at a refugee home and meets Amon (Eidin Jalali), who has warm brown eyes, and his lively sister “Bana” Banafshe (Banafshe Hourmazdi) and from then on the trio start roaming the streets. Images of a summer in a threesome alternate with family scenes and encounters in the refugee home that are often edited so close together that vibrations and humor emerge. Parvis at the party, bathed in pink light. Privet hedges in a tidy German residential area, social workers in close-up shots, resumes, self-image. The scenes traverse a narrative about the differences between Parvis, who is seen as a “Mediterranean type” by Germans and is regarded as German by the Iranians, his parents, who long for Tehran and worry that the boy could still not feel at home here despite all of the assimilation work, and Amon and Bana, who wish for a different, more self-determined life in Germany, but might not be able to have that. Bana formulates this painful discrepancy in a beautiful, sad sentence that sticks with you for a long time after: “Since we got here, I’ve had the feeling of experience everything twice: as the person I could have been, and the person that I am.” The three wander through fields and meadows as she says this. They’re on the run from a looming deportation, but the images simultaneously tell the story of being young in the summer, of affection and community, of the future.

Hendrike Bake (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy