There are six episodes about six hip, young Berliners with a migrant background.
Photo: ARD
When young Ani (Maria Mai Rohmann) meets a man in a Berlin club and flirts with him, he suddenly makes strange allusions to her Vietnamese family background, takes her in his arms and says: “I like your petite bodies.” She pushes him disgusted, while he tries to justify his racist idiocy with the words: “That’s meant as a compliment.” Then she grabs him by the waistband, pours her beer into his crotch and says: “That’s also meant as a compliment.” The six-part series “Made in Germany” tells the story in half-hour episodes about six Berliners in their early twenties who live in Germany as so-called second-generation migrants and are repeatedly confronted with different forms of racism. This ranges from physically aggressive food authority officials who harass Ani’s father in his Vietnamese restaurant, to Berlin police officers who immediately become violent during a traffic stop when someone accuses them of racial profiling. “Made in Germany” primarily highlights the supposedly subtler mechanisms of racist exclusion.
Is the young guy Jamila (Paula Julie Pitsch) meets in a gallery and then dates really interested in her? Or is the non-white Jamila just a certain type that this “Johannes,” as Jamila’s friend calls him disparagingly at some point, is constantly looking for in order to use this liaison to acquire a certain credibility critical of racism. The six very short and quickly told episodes of “Made in Germany” all intertwine; the six hip, young Berliners have known each other for years and have been friends. Sometimes these stories come across as a bit labored. But this is probably mainly due to the short format, which forces the series makers to exaggerate their stories, which are told in an emotional and ironic way. But what comes out of it exposes a lot of conflict lines in everyday life. Coumba (Vanessa Yeboah) dreams of becoming a model and becomes the face of a sports label’s campaign. But she is heavily criticized for this by a left-wing, anti-racist group, which includes her brother. Is this blackwashing what she’s doing? Does it help to clear the tarnished image of the company, which is criticized for the exploitation of its non-white workers in the global south?
“Made in Germany” doesn’t just feature migrant people in front of the camera, some of whom are also amateur actors. The creators of the series, Naomi Bechert, Bahar Bektaş, Duc-Thi Bui, Ozan Mermer, Duc Ngo Ngoc, Anta Helena Recke, Sharon Ryba-Kahn and Raquel Stern, also have a migrant background and share their own experiences and knowledge incorporated into production. It’s about a family whose parents want to return to Iraq, but the children, who are now (almost) grown up, have absolutely no desire to leave Berlin. Mo (Mohamed Kanj Khamis) wants to go to film school and his sister Seyran (Bayan Layla) wants to become a designer. The parents can’t handle it at first. In general, these episodes, which are as much about urban hipness as they are about traditional family values, also involve a lot of heated arguments. No matter whether it’s about the coming out of Zehra (Beritan Balci), whose father is dying, or the question of how Nikki (Daniil Kremkin), as a young Berliner, and his Belarusian family deal with their Jewish heritage. “Made in Germany” ultimately only touches on all of these stories, but it creates an entertaining and sometimes skin-deepening panorama of interconnected Berlin migration stories that otherwise receive far too little attention in public media.
“Made in Germany” in the ARD media library
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