Sprache: Deutsch und Portugiesisch – Untertitel: Portugiesisch und Deutsch / Englisch – Format: HD, 19:55 min

Excerpts from the play:
“This is not a play, nor is it a historical document based upon facts and figures. This isn’t the truth. This is a play based on people’s stories and their memories- but memory lies. Everything we believe to be true about our identity is wrong. Do we really know ourselves? We know our names. We don’t know our identity, because we have been manipulating it … We’re going to search for the future, and we’re going to question the past. Who knows what identity truly is? Historical facts, tales from news outlets… everything has been blinded, displaced, written over…” “Tonight’s story consists of many stories. But there’s a single power that holds these stories together. This power, always present in history yet absent from all history books, is love. This evening is dedicated to that power.”

Credits:
Script and Direction: Jens Vilela Neumann
Coordination: Birgit Plank-Mucavele
Costumes: Sara Machado da Graça, Maria A. Santos
Stage Design: Cláudia Gali
Film Subtitles: Lea Kübler, Timi Gaspari
Production Assistant + Actor: Assado Lichane
Stage Technicians: Zeferino Chicuamba, Elídio Henriques
Lighting: Mando Produções
Sound: Professor Sulemane
Translations: Margarida de Sousa Vilela
Communication/PR: Rosita Mbebe, Maria Atália
Actors from the Escola de Comunicação e Arte-Universidade Eduardo Mondlane Art School: Horácio Guiamba | Félix Tinga | Alice Chirindza | Nelson Fakir | Sufaida Moiane | Abiyaid Candrino and Keron Kessler
Musicians from the ECA-UEM Music School: Luka Mucavele: Musical direction, Xizambi and Mbvoko | Feliciano de Castro: Piano | Hélio Mavanga: Guitar | Mole: Bass | Valdemir: Drums I Adriano Majaje: Trumpet

We’d like to thank:
Philipp Schauer (the German Ambassador in Maputo), Nataniel Ngomane (Director of the ECA) Alda Costa, Arminda Reis and Tio Paulino (CCU), Machado da Graça, Eckehard Fricke, Dr. Mathias Schmauch, Steffi Kölling, Karin Kessler, Mário Ching, Regina Vera Cruz, João, and all the friends who told us their stories. Special thanks to members of the ‘Return to Mozambique’ associations ATMA und AAMA
Media partners: TVM, TIM, Gungu TV, Club of Mozambique, ZDF
Subsidized by the Foreign Bureau of the Federal Republic of Germany, Aktion Afrika
In cooperation with: ICMAA Maputo, ECA Maputo, CCU Maputo

This play fuses stage acting, live music and film. It holds up a mirror to the shared history of two countries, explored through the lens of individual lives. It tells of Mozambican contract workers employed by the DDR and German businessmen based in Mozambique for over 200 years. It tells of Mozambican-German children who search for their fathers. It tells of Mozambicans who consider themselves to be German and Germans who have become Mozambicans.

Seven musicians from Maputo interpret this voyage through time; seven actors appear in humorous scenarios dramatizing the political and personal controversies that arise when two worlds collide; hundred-year old projected film material alongside “first-hand experts” allow their recounted experiences to be heard.