Jeanny Wasielewski

Scriptwriter and Journalist

ODYSEE

ODYSSEE is my latest documentary. Produced 2016 in Germany.

The so called 'refugee crisis’ has left many feeling helpless, scared or even angry in Germany. The arrival of around one million people within less than a year is challenging for a society, that is only slowly realising, that it’s a country of immigration.

Having worked on a seemingly endless number of refugee related stories as a journalist over the past year or two, I’ve been incredibly happy to document the efforts you can follow in ODYSSEE.

The short doc is about an artist’s vision to respond to this ‘refugee crisis’ with his own means - art and craft. Georg Friedrich Wolf invited refugees into his century old forge and taught them how to produce iron nails. In return they received a small loan and a certificate. But this four month long process was only the run up to a week of intense work, in which the trained refugees and Wolf created a huge, symbolic wood and iron raft in a field somewhere near Frankfurt.

To me this film is about an attempt to see how this ‘refugee crisis’ could be turned into something different. It may be hard work and we may be lost in translation, and there are moments of despair and misunderstandings but in the end this odyssee is worth it.  

The film ODYSSEE is screening at international film festivals

**Odyssee is part of the Short to the Point Festival is Romania**

**Odyssee is part of the Roma Cinema Doc Festival competition**

**Odyssee is part of the Chennai International Short Film Festival from 19th to 25th of February 2017.

**Odyssee is part of the  Around International Film Festival and will screen at:

Berlin - 17th of December, 2016 @Acud Macht

Amsterdam - 7th of January, 2017 @LAB111

Paris - 21th of January, 2017 @Ourcq Blanc

 

Camera: Jeanny Gering

Editor: Simon Oblescak 

Special thanks to Esra Rotthoff and the Hofgut Habitzheim

 

Still from ODYSSEE - the artist and his crew