On origin, the loss of home, and broken biographies. On friendship, comfort, and love.
When Natascha Wodin comes to Berlin in 1992, she needs someone to help her with the cleaning. From the applicants who respond to her ad, she chooses Nastja from Ukraine. It is the home country of Natascha Wodin’s parents, who were hauled off to Germany as victims of forced labour in the Second World War. Nastja, a civil engineer, found it impossible to make a living in the economic chaos that descended upon her country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her last salary was paid in the form of a small bag of rice – too little to sustain her and her small grandson. And so, she boarded a train in the hope of finding a source of income. But when her visa expires, she slips into a life of illegality, becomes one of the many people who have gone underground in the jungle of the new German capital, which is still growing and expanding with little or no control.
For Natascha Wodin, it is as if fate has caught up with her again. Her relationship with Nastja develops more and more into a friendship, and the Ukrainian woman’s homesickness recalls that of Wodin’s own mother, who succumbed to it at a young age. Now, many years later, she uses restrained, deeply moving, poetic words to paint a portrait of Nastja, a woman who won’t give up.
