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THE MIRACULOUS TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORKINGCLASS INTO FOREIGNERS

DIE WUNDERSAME VERWANDLUNG DER ARBEITERKLASSE IN AUSLÄNDER

By Samir .

DSCHOINT VENTSCHR FILMPRODUKTION - as PROD

Social issues - Post-Production 2023

The Social-Democratic Party and the trade unions shaped the Swiss working-class culture for over 100 years, but in the early 1970s many of these institutions collapsed in just a decade. How did the term "worker" has become synonymous with "foreigner."

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- Social issues, Documentary, Historical
- Countries
- SWITZERLAND
- Languages
- GERMAN, ITALIAN
- Director(s)
- Samir .
- Writer(s)
- Samir .
- Producer(s)
- Werner Swiss SCHWEIZER (DSCHOINT VENTSCHR FILMPRODUKTION), Levin VIETH (DSCHOINT VENTSCHR FILMPRODUKTION)
- Synopsis
- At the beginning of the 1960s, the largest migration movement after World War II takes place in Europe. Millions of workers from the south move to the northern industrialized countries. A short time later, more than a million people from Italy are already working in Switzerland. Many have to live in barracks while they rebuild Switzerland into a prosperous country. Hundreds of thousands, however, were denied family reunification by the "seasonal migrant statute". This led to countless tragedies, as many parents hid their children from the alien police.
  The trade unions and the Social Democratic Party were indifferent to the problems of the migrants and in part xenophobic.
  James Schwarzenbach, the leader of the "National Action against Alienation," launched an initiative to expel half of the foreign workers. In 1970, a referendum was held, which at the time consisted only of male Swiss citizens. Despite a narrow rejection at the ballot box, racism had now reached the center of society.
  In the meantime, the trade unions had changed and opened up to the foreign workforce.
  Despite the resistance of the migrants, the legal regulations against the foreign population were tightened in the last decades. This is in contrast to real life in Switzerland, which has become more diverse and cosmopolitan due to the diversity of migration.
  Filmmaker Samir interweaves the social upheavals of this time with his personal story. With the help of animation, he tells how he grew up as a migrant boy in a working-class suburb of Zurich.
  For the first time in a documentary film, he uses the latest technologies from the game industry.