FRG 1969 | Director: Edith Marcello (former Schmidt) | Camera: Bernhard Weber | Editor: Gisela Grafe | Sound: Dietrich Köpke | Production: Hessischer Rundfunk (hr) | b/w | digital | 30 min | german, turkish OV | hr

The off-screen speaker's voice explains the situation of Ms Karatan from Turkey: "She came to a glassworks in July, with a one-year contract at an hourly wage of 2.30 marks." Just a few months later, Ms Karatan's living and working conditions will prove untenable. The work is dangerous, and she experiences racist attacks in the factory. Now she's taking legal action against the company, and if she loses, she could be deported. Ms Karatan is accompanied by her little nephew, who translates Edith Marcello's questions: apparently, broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk was unable to provide professional Turkish interpreters in 1969. This presents a hurdle, not least because BILLIGE HÄNDE takes the opening question "What do we know about them?" – the workers – seriously.

A Greek trade unionist, an Italian priest, and young Günter Wallraff place individual fates in the context of West Germany's immigration policy. The shocking conditions are part of a system. And yet Marcello finds moments of solidarity in her half-hour HR report: a wildcat strike among Spanish women workers in Hanover; the founding of an Italian school by women workers in Frankfurt. (Patrick Kokoszynski, 2023)