Film Archive

Unveiled

Official Selection - Competition 2005 / Fremde Haut / Germany, Austria 2005

Iranian refugee Fariba is forced in Germany to dress as a man and assume a male identity. In disguise, she then takes on an illegal job in a factory where she meets the young labourer Anna. A strong bond grows between them, whose consequences are inevitable: the female immigrant is ultimately forced to reveal her true identity....

Synopsis

30-year-old Iranian translator Fariba is applying for political asylum in Frankfurt. The German authorities clearly aren’t going to process her application in a hurry. Fariba has lied to the authorities: the reason for her flight is her lesbian orientation, for which she faces the death penalty in Iran. After an unbalanced Iranian refugee, Siamak, commits suicide at the airport, Fariba cuts her hair and takes on his identity. In spite of the threat of deportation, in her male disguise and with false papers, she manages to get illegal seasonal work in a factory, where she falls in love with the labourer Anna... While of a different genre, this drama touches upon the same theme as the comedy The Terminal (foreigners who can’t enter Western countries find themselves in no-man’s land). It reflects on the problems of Islamic immigrants in Germany and on the issue of “internal” exile, which the heroine experiences in consequence of her sexual orientation, not only in her conservative Islamic native country, but also in her Western host society.

About the film

97 min / Color, 35 mm
World premiere
Director Angelina Maccarone / Screenplay Angelina Maccarone, Judith Kaufmann / Dir. of Photography Judith Kaufmann / Editor Bettina Böhler / Producer Ulrike Zimmermann / Production MMM Film Zimmermann & Co GmbH, koprodukce/coproduction: Fischer Film / Cast Jasmin Tabatabai, Anneke Kim Sarnau, Navid Akhavan, Hinnerk Schönemann, Jens Münchow / Contact Media Luna New Films UG, MMM Film Zimmermann & Co GmbH
www: www.medialuna-entertainment.de

About the director

Angelina Maccarone (1965, Cologne) studied German and American literature and film at Hamburg university. In 1994, together with Alexander Scherer, she made a comedy for ARD about a lesbian girl, Kommt Mausi raus?, for which she also wrote the screenplay, as she does for all her films. Her second film was the romantic comedy Everything Will Be Fine (Alles wird gut, 1997), which won Audience Prizes in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles. After the film An Angel’s Revenge (Ein Engel schlägt zurück, 1998) she made several awardwinning “social spots”. Her latest film Unveiled (2005), apart from the usual lesbian issues, also treats loss of identity as one of its themes.