The Pension Kant at Kantstraße 104a in the West Berlin district of Charlottenburg provided accommodation for Tamil refugees from around 1980 to 1989. Spread over two floors, about 60 people lived there for varying lengths of time. Women came by means of traffickers whose original destination was Italy. Men from politically radicalized parties came, nationalists met internationalists, bringing political tensions with them to the Pension Kant. Some stayed for one night without applying for asylum, and some for several days, weeks or months before continuing their journey to further west in Germany, England, France or even Canada. For others, it was the start of their life in Berlin. Some found allies in the lively political scene of West Berlin. They worked delivering newspapers, they cleaned in restaurants, and they even hosted parties together. They would also follow the developing war in Sri Lanka all the while living as an exile in Berlin and receiving letters with news of the deaths of their relatives. Marriages were contracted here, families were established and children born.

The film reconstructs the experience of this time. Fictionalized letters based on interviews and conversations with former Tamil residents of the building provide insight into their inner worlds. In the letters, what took place between the residents and the filmmaker – the daughter of former residents – during the interviews merges into the narrative. Tamils of the so-called second generation, who now live in Berlin, lend their voices to the film, and thus enable resonances with their own experiences and memories. Their voices oscillate between the Tamil and German languages and merge with both the echoes of the archive images and the soundscape of the building. Film footage from the building today and photographs of former residents unfold, reflecting the multi-layeredness of space, time and memory.

40 years after கறுப்பு யூலை [Black July] in1983, the docu-fiction contributes to locating the memory of the Tamil flight to Berlin and Germany. It connects the experiences of different generations, encourages us to reflect on the presence of the fugitive, and makes a case for envisioning liminal places like asylum shelters as sites of the living.