“Guess what we’re doing! We’re going to practice swimming.” Hanan accompanies her brother to classes in the public pool. The first swimming badge is called the Seahorse, their instructor explains, because it “stands” in the water and doesn’t drown. When Hanan’s family came to Europe in a rubber dinghy, she couldn’t swim. To forget this experience, she learned not to go under in the water – like a seahorse.
Elderly residents of the LGBT-friendly Julie Roger Home in Frankfurt enjoy visits from male strippers, baking transgender Christmas cookies and Sunday dance events with an emphasis on spring fever. At the elderly home, seniors of all sexual orientations are welcomed to express their sexuality during the last days of their lives. The short documentary WE WILL SURVIVE observes the funny, heart-warming and at times delicate everyday life at Julie Roger Home.
At the beginning Michelle Bastien-Archer shows and comments on photos of her wedding. The African-American and her childhood friend Jermaine were married in the unhospitable visitors’ hall of Sing Sing in 2007. He had been sentenced to 22 years to life for voluntary manslaughter in 1998. Ever since, she has been fighting tirelessly to prove his innocence. Now new documents have turned up that reinforce doubts about the trial’s decisive witness statement. Michelle becomes more confident. She presses even more determinedly ahead with her efforts to get Jermaine released. The camera is with her as if live, for almost a decade.
