“The Pickers” is a journey to the extensive crops of southern Europe, where our fruits and vegetables are collected by a thousand immigrants, mostly Africans, who travel from one field to another. Most of them work irregularly, without rights, and exploitation is more the rule than the exception. What we see adds a bitter taste to what we eat every day.

Elke Sasse
Elke Sasses films center on people from all walks of life. She documented the daily life of garlic farmers in China or dancehall pensioners in Berlin. She accompanied homeless people on their way through Germany, former slave workers from Eastern Europe waiting for justice, and searched all over the world for remnants of the Berlin Wall. She often finds the “big” in the “small” – her documentary “Babske Radio” is set on a bench in a Ukrainian village where women discuss their lives and big politics. “Worldwide Berlin” documents a day in Berlin – a place with that name in seven different places around the world. In her films she often addresses global and socio-political issues like escape journeys to Europe (#MyEscape), the situation of refugees torn between finding security and the situation back home (The War on my Phone), the impact of international investment in the Global South (Oil Promises) or the relation between trade politics and migration (Tomatoes and Greed). Elke has won several international prizes, such as the Prix Europa in 2016 for her film #MyEscape.
Filmography
– #MyEscape (2016)
– The War on my Phone (2018)
– Oil Promises (2021)
– The War on my Phone (2018)
– Oil Promises (2021)