Ortsteil Autobahn [Motorway district]

The documentary short film Ortsteil Autobahn [Motorway district] draws attention to a place where contemporary violence remains unnoticed behind the façade of a former border. The camera pans across the sprawling grounds of what was once the largest inner-German border crossing at Marienborn. The soundtrack, recorded on site, combines voices and events with the materiality of the past. While the memorial to German division commemorates the systematic violence of the SED regime and derives from it the narrative of a free, united country, a kilometre further on, a different reality emerges: in the middle of the forest, in the former barracks of the border troops, refugees are housed – confronted with social exclusion on a daily basis.