In his first film made in Germany, expatriate Iranian director, Sohrab Shahid Saless, creates a portrait of another expatriate: a Turkish factory worker in Berlin.

Saless' camera observes the gastarbeiter's daily routine.

”We see him at his job, a dedicated prisoner to his monstrous machine; travelling home on the underground, where only a drunk will talk to him; walking home to the shabby rooms he shares with other Turkish workers, and where he occasionally writes a letter and regularly counts his money. . . For all that the foreign worker tries to engage with his adopted city (and he tries, inarticulately, but with an innocent single-mindedness), he might as well have come from another planet.”

David Wilson, Sight and Sound.

Sohrab Shahid Saless

Born in Iran: 1944. Studied film making in Vienna, and at IDHEC, in Paris, 1968-74, directed 22 short and documentary films for the Persian Ministry of Culture.

Feature films: A Simple Event (1973), Still Life (1974), Far From Home (1975), Coming of Age (1976).