Public streaming & Discussion of Award-Winning movie "When Paul Came over the Sea"
The CUA Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, with the generous support of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany invites you to a public streaming of "When Paul Came over the Sea", an award-winning documentary in French, Spanish, and German with English subtitles.
Meet the director, Jacob Preuss, and the Minister and Head of Political Affairs, German Embassy, Helga M. Barth, to discuss questions of migration, borders, encounters and the craft of documentary film making.
Part of German Campus Week 2018.
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Film Synopsis
Paul Nkamani is a migrant from Cameroon. He has made his way across the Sahara to the Moroccan coast where he lives in a forest, waiting for the right moment to cross the Mediterranean Sea. This is where he meets Jakob, a filmmaker from Berlin, who is researching a film about Europe’s borders.
Soon afterwards, Paul manages to cross over to Spain on an inflatable rubber boat. He survives – but half of his companions die on this tragic 50-hour odyssey. Once in Spain, instead of receiving psychological support, he is sent to an immigration detention center on a prison island. It is only upon his release that Jakob and Paul meet again, at a Red Cross shelter in Granada. Because of the economic crisis in southern Europe, Paul decides to continue on to Germany, the former colonizing power in Cameroon and the country of his dreams.
When Paul arrives in Jakob’s home country, Jakob must decide: will he play an active role in Paul’s pursuit of a better life, or remain the detached filmmaker? In the end the film takes a twist – one that neither Paul nor Jakob could have foreseen when they first met in the Moroccan forest. The film tells the story of their unusual friendship; a friendship that emerged before the backdrop of Europe’s ongoing political debates on migration.