DIE WUNDERSAME WELT DER WASCHKRAFT

In the posh hotels of Berlin guests sleep soundly every night on fresh, crisp white bed sheets. Little do they know of the 140km journey these sheets have gone on to be washed, ironed and starched in the German-owned Fliegel laundry in the small Polish town of Gryfino, where 400 poorly paid locals work day and night to keep up the flow of clean linen back to the German capital. At Fliegel, among the industrial washing machines, we meet Monika, who barely sees her husband due to them both working shifts. She is worried about her daughter who has just lost her job at the laundry and wants to be a beautician. Then there is Beata, a single mother who struggles to make ends meet for her three children and whose own mother is planning to go to England to work for six months potting tulips. In this town, where even the mayor has to have a second job as a petrol station attendant, money is scarce and the people struggle to hold on to the hope that life will be better for their children. This is a story of the true realities of life in today’s united Europe.

"The main focus lies on two Polish families who try to find their way around the complex world of work in a united Europe where borders are open, but in which the loss of every job in Germany to a country abroad is at the same time bitterly bemoaned. When blamed of destroying German jobs by employing cheap Polish workers, Mr. Wiesemann, the managing director of 'Fliegel-Textilservice', answers, 'I don’t do business in Poland, but in Europe'." - Hans-Christian Schmid