NOT YOUR SISTER – women living in the care underground – follows Vietnamese women recruited into the Ruhr area’s healthcare system. Highlighting their voices, the film traces a cycle of labor, health and migration within the capitalist system.

The „Ruhrgebiet“ in Germanys west is a former coal-mining area. In the 1960s many people from south and east Europe and beyond migrated to this region to work in the coal mines and other industrial labor. Once called „guest-workers“, this area is formed and shaped by them – by their bodies, languages and cultures.

NOT YOUR SISTER listens to the diverse inner worlds of the women from Vietnam while diving into the past of the Ruhr area. Through filmic observations, archival footage and interviews, the women and their environment get connected. An essayistic, hybrid documentary, that makes the underground become visible.

In my previous film CLOWN*ESSES (World Premiere Dok Leipzig 2023), I explored the oppression of women’s bodies and their radical liberation through clowning. As an essayistic documentary, NOT YOUR SISTER continues this exploration in everyday-life.

NOT YOUR SISTER Teaser