Distant Lights

The River Oder forms the border between two worlds. East and West are a stone’s throw away from each other. All that seems to divide the inhabitants of the Polish town of Slubice and the German Frankfurt am Oder from each other is an apparently shallow and fordable stretch of river. At night, you can see the lights of the world on the other side. Migrants and smugglers from the whole of Eastern Europe know this and come to Slubice with only one aim: to cross the river. Andreas, a young German cigarette smuggler, risks the fury and beatings of his father and elder brother to rescue his lover from a reception centre and to prevent her being sent back to one of the Baltic states. Ingo has a mattress discount store that balances on fragile financial constructions and he is about to lose everything to his debtors. Sonja becomes so involved with the immigrants for whom she interprets that she risks her job and relationship to help a young Russian migrant. Across the river, taxi driver Antoni desperately tries to get money for the exorbitant expensive communion dress of his daughter. A young Ukrainian family that wants to cross may offer a way out. In a sober (and sombre) way, Schmid sketches life on the Polish-German border, where moral considerations have to give way to personal gain (or rather, to attempts to survive). But occasionally help appears -and with it hope -from an unexpected corner.