Tell Them About Us follows the lives of seven teenage girls as they embark on a journey of adolescence in Eberswalde, a provincial city in East Germany, just 55 km from Berlin. As newcomers to the area, the girls find themselves navigating not only the typical challenges of teenage life—friendships, school, and self-discovery—but also the complexities of adapting to a new culture and environment. Thrown into a world that is both unfamiliar and often unwelcoming, the girls grapple with the nuances of their identities as immigrants and refugees. Their experiences of displacement, cultural adjustment, and the pressures of assimilation add layers of complexity to their coming-of-age narratives. Despite these challenges, they find solace and strength in their shared bond as they strive to carve out a place for themselves in their new home and community. Parallel to their daily lives, the director facilitates workshops where the girls explore their hopes, dreams, and fears through writing, music, and acting, afterwhich, they write scenes in order to stage in front of the camera. These scenes are turned into dream sequences where the girls envision themselves ahead, as a way to process painful experiences and playfully translate them into future perspectives.

Festivals & Awards: CPH:DOX 2024

About the filmmaker:

Rand Beiruty is a Jordanian writer, director and co-founder of Shaghab Films, a production company based in Amman, Jordan. She holds a practice-based PhD centered on representation and participatory filmmaking from Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. Beiruty is an alumna of Berlinale Talents, Beirut Talents, Rotterdam Lab, Locarno Documentary School, ANIDOX:LAB, Film Leader Incubator Asia, Documentary Campus, Robert Bosch Film Prize and Ji.hlava Academy. She has pitched her projects on international platforms and received awards from Tribeca Film Institute, Mifa Animation du Monde, Arab Cinema Center and European Network of Young Cinema among others. Her debut feature documentary TELL THEM ABOUT US that was awarded best pitch at the Reception of German Film Schools, Haus Am See scholarship and received production grants from AFAC, BKM, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film.