Benjamin Kahlmeyer
2021Meanwhile in Mamelodi
Benjamin Kahlmeyer
Set against the raucous backdrop of the 2010 World Cup, MEANWHILE IN MAMELODI is a beautifully crafted portrait of a place and one family’s daily life inside it. The Mtsweni family lives in the Pretoria Township of the title, in the district known as Extension 11. Their world is a ramshackle collection of corrugated tin dwellings and makeshift shops, open sewers littered with debris and red-earth rectangles filled with soccer-playing children and teens. Seventeen-year-old Mosquito is one of those kids. As she studies for math tests, flirts with boys and shops with her best friend, her father Steven prepares his "tuck shop" for the promise of cash-flush tourists. Meanwhile, his wife struggles with mental illness. The Mtswenis' lives unfold as the Cup brings new hope to the ravaged town. Despite the poverty around her, Mosquito insists this is not her parents' country. She is the face of South Africa's future - part of "a new generation free to do all things."
Meanwhile in Mamelodi
Die Unsichtbaren
Benjamin Kahlmeyer
Presents the human face of the immigration crisis, following four migrants from Syria, Kenya and Cameroon as they wade through Germany's rigorous immigration process and await the final verdict on their applications for asylum.
The Invisibles
EISEN
Benjamin Kahlmeyer
A foggy landscape with new buildings in Eisenhüttenstadt at the German-Polish border: “Eisen”, Iron, that’s how they call the town here. Portraits of asylum seekers from all over the world are set among impressions of a dreary life in a strictly composed sequence of images.
EISEN