"A modest enterprise of surprising impact, Jan Schutte's first feature film may remind veterans of the refugee stories by Erich Mana Remarque. The difference being that Remaique was writing about exiles escaping Nazi Germany before WW2, while Schutte deals with Pakistanis entering West Germany with false papers, asking for political asylum and trying to establish a livelihood.

Schutte does his best to adopt an observer's point of view, never pretending to speak for the characters themselves He even refrains from translating the conversations they have in their own language.

The film starts with one Pakistani, Shezad, being kicked out of a Chinese restaurant when he attempts to sell flowers to the customers It ends with the same maitre d' who did the kicking becoming Shezad's partner in a Pakistani restaurant they have mounted with their own hands.

In between these two points, Schutte gives a succinct and sensitive picture of this constantly growing community of homeless people, from different nations, without any means of existence, their impotence and their despair in a world which finally - even when smiling upon them - wouldn't lift a finger to improve their lot.

Shot entirely in decidely unglamorous Hamburg, in black and white, Schutte's film doesn't preach and doesn't point accusing fingers in any specific direction, except to vultures who make money out of the misfortune of others In spite of the grim subject and unflattering scenery in which it evolves, both direction and performances, particularly those of Bhasker and Ric Young as the unlikely partners, preserve a human dimension that works to the picture's advantage - 'Variety