On the Discomfort of Soft Hands
Ever chilled out on a ping-pong table? On the ping-pong table in Andaç and Ceren’s neighborhood, people party, laugh, and argue. This is where songs are written, fake apology letters are forged, and now the two siblings are shooting a movie here—on the 16-GB memory card their parents gave them for their high school graduation.
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Außenansicht Theater an der Parkaue
A film about their lives, their family, their world. About everything that has shaped them. Like their mother, who always had to work and therefore has rough hands. Their film is a tribute to all the rough hands around them—because otherwise, it’s never about them, unless there’s a problem. And as the 16 GB fills up and Andaç and Ceren use their film to make visible what far too often remains invisible, they realize: In Germany, rough hands are both the most valuable and the most worthless at the same time.
Zehra Sönmez’s debut, which was awarded the 2024 Berlin Play Prize for Young Audiences by the State of Berlin at the Theater an der Parkaue, poses the pressing question: Whose stories belong to the “German ‘we’”? The play calls for solidarity from a young post-migrant perspective and is brought to the stage by director Till Doğan Ertener with great directness, powerful beats, and live camera work.
Supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
