Home Hope Opel


DOCU | FILM | TV

Germany 2012
91 Min (Original with english subtitles)

Directors: Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken

Six young people on their way to becoming industrial mechanics at Opel – facing a future which seems more uncertain than ever. We follow Jerome, André, Sinan, Tim, Marius and Marcel, with all their hopes and fears, through this period of radical change. A film about global strategies and local and personal life plans.


TRAILER


AWARDS


FESTIVALS

2012DOK Leipzig / 55. Internationales Leipziger Festival für Dokumentar- und Animationsfilm, Germany

201223. Kinofest Lünen, Germany

2013 — Dokumentarfilmfest / 15. Stranger Than Fiction, Germany

2013 — 21. Der neue Heimatfilm  / Freistadt, Austria

2014 — Ruhrtriennale, Germany

2023  — Ruhrtriennale / Film Retrospective loekenfranke / Bochum


SYMPOSIUM

2013 — Tutorial / Literatur und Film der Arbeitswelt / Pädagogische Hochschule Linz, Austria


REVIEWS

„For all its documentary narrative, this film is a piece about the a coal-mining district, about youth culture – part social study and part economic thriller. And it’s the story of a few insecure students who today, long after the last day of shooting, can confidently say: „We’ve all grown up.“ The story Franke and Loeken tell is without ornamentation, nothing is embellished, not even with music: their soundtrack is the noise of the machines, the singing of the birds early at the factory gate and the language of the protagonists.“
Annika Fischer // Der Westen // 03.12.2012

„Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken accompany six 16- to 19-year-olds, who start their apprenticeships as industrial mechanics at the Opel plant in Bochum in 2009, and their master craftsman. They are there when the boys put on the Opel shirts for the first time, sweat at the drill and lathe, measure for the hundredth time, despair, can’t please Mr Kranz again, get bored in the union meeting and play with their phones, and suddenly – right before the exam – completely lose their cool.“
Grit Lemke // at DOK Leipzig (International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film)
2012


„Home Hope Opel is a beautiful and a tranquil film. It offers us a glimpse into the day-to-day world of industrial labour, a world which these days is otherwise completely disregarded by film and television.“
Fritz Wolf // Ver.di Bildung + Beratung // 11/2012

„Little by little, you grow fond of the apprentices, and by the end you’re just as nervous as they are during an important exam. That is one of the documentary’s great achievements, also due, not least, to its likeable protagonists.“
Benjamin Hahn // Ruhr Nachrichten // 06.12.2012

„What makes the documentary so impressive is its ability to show, with simple and in fact unspectacular images, what really lies behind the central concepts of Opel and Bochum: a complex of fates and the lives of thousands and thousands of people.
The documentary manages to detail both the lives of six young men in an important phase of their lives and the complicated economic environment which they find themselves in. The sword of Damocles of major economic policy constantly hovers above them, casting its shadow over their apprenticeships. In doing so, the filmmakers dispense with a musical soundtrack and official statements.“
Thomas Lang // Auto.de // 12.12.2012


STILLS


SYNOPSIS

HOME HOPE OPEL profiles six young people, aged 16 to 19, who began their apprenticeships as industrial mechanics at the Opel plant in Bochum, Germany in 2009. While they must learn to cope with a new phase in their lives, the start of their professional careers and approaching departure from the security of their parental homes, Opel itself is being sucked deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of the international financial crisis and facing ever-increasing economic pressure. We follow Jerome, André, Sinan, Tim, Marius and Marcel, with all their hopes and fears, through this period of radical change; we are introduced to their dreams for the future as well as their worries. They stand at the threshold of a professional life whose future is already uncertain.

At the same time, ARBEIT HEIMAT OPEL contrasts the everyday lives of the Plant II apprentices with GM and Opel’s fortunes on the world stage on two seemingly unrelated levels. Despite their distance both in physical and in media terms, the two levels repeatedly intersect and come into contact with one another, connecting global strategies with local and personal life plans – and vice versa.


CREDITS

Home Hope Opel
Gemany 2012
91 Min (Original with english subtitles)

ARBEIT HEIMAT OPEL
Deutschland 2012
91 Min (D)

Directors: Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken
Director of Photography: Jörg Adams, Michael Loeken, Reinhard Köcher, Dieter Stürmer
Location Sound: Filipp Forberg, Axel Schmidt
Editor: Bert Schmidt
Commissioning Editor: Jutta Krug
Supported by: WDR