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Director's Statement
MACONDO is the unofficial name of a settlement on the outskrits of Vienna that has been housing refugees over the last 60 years. Over 2,000 people from 20 different countries, from Chile to Vietnam, and nowadays mainly from Afghanistan, Somalia and Chechnya co-exist there in cheap social housing. When I first heard about this place I was intrigued and wanted to find out more about the people who live there and their life stories. I visited the settelement many times, talked to inhabitants and did documentary research that included organizing filmmaking workshops for the children and teenagers. The children's lives and stories especially touched me. Maybe because I have a story of migration myself. I was 12 years old when my family left Iran and we settled down in Austria. The experience of growing up between two cultures is something I know intimately. Children from migrant and refugee families often have to grow up much too fast, take on too much responsibility and function as mediators between their parents and the new society they now enter. This is a big chance but also a heavy burden on a child. These issues were essential when I started to develop a story and write a fictional screenplay based on a number of real-life stories and incorporating many documentary elements I came across in reserach. I continued this documentary-style approach during the casting and shooting: almost all the actors are non-professionals and it is their first time in front of a camera. They are refugees, social workers, counselors etc. in real life. They never read the screenplay or learned any dialogue. I worked with improvisation as a principle. The story took shape while we filmed chronologically, allowing the actors to develop and grow with their characters during the process.