Touching An Elephant

After years of a physically disintegrating daily routine on the streets of Kassel, the 27-year-old Leon finally wants to beat his heroin addiction. Following a failed robbery, he hopes to find his way back to life in a therapy facility.

After the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, many refugees are stranded in the non-EU state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. One of them is 15-year-old Nahid. The girl finds some warmth and encouragement with Ferida, who lives in one of the border villages - and observes how people return to their tent accommodations after the pushbacks. The memories of her own civil war past slowly come back to her.

In conversations with her parents Yıldız and Mustafa as well as her brothers Taner and Onur, she goes on a painful journey into the past. Political persecution of the Alevi-Kurdish family in Turkey, the flight to Europe in 1989, several racist attacks, depression and excessive demands on the parents – the effects on the three siblings are different. Dealing with the experiences and strokes of fate causes different reactions in them. Bektaş quickly realizes that the uncertainty about Taner’s fate in Turkey is only a reflection of her life experience as a family in exile.

In a utopian future free of wars, hier­archies and discrimination, a young Black woman must decide whether to inherit or erase the trauma of her ancestors.