"With outside help"

1999, dogfilm (Kröger, van Megen, Scheffner) for ZDF / ARTE, Betacam SP, 31 min.

"With Outside Help" is a video collage about an illegal service. Between "Rescue" and "slave trade" lies a whole variety of ethic and political valuations and re-evaluations. The rescuer's office is the "No Man's Land", the "Transit sector". From here he guides the viewer onto a journey through three episodes of German history. His fictious personality is based on reports of different rescuers, whose work can be judged best by refugees themselves.
Hanna Papanek was able to escape from Marseille to the US in 1940 supported by the "Emergency Rescue Committee". Günther Hellvoigt left the GDR towards the West in 1972 in the trunk of a car of ARAMCO AG. The Kurd Devrim Kaya fled Turkey in 1994 and came back to her country of birth, Germany, with the help of an international trafficking organization.
Their experiences and their reasons to use "outside help" are confronted with the story of a medial change in values.

no human is illegal