A Promised Rose Garden

A keenly observed social drama which exemplifies the enduring marginalized status of the Vietnamese diaspora across large parts of Central and East Europe. On the one hand the young: in order to pay back their debts she works as a housekeeper and he sells cigarettes. Contrast them with their elders: he has already climbed the social ladder and is now an authority within the Vietnamese cigarette mafia. The trendy house and incense sticks can’t compensate for the long and dark winters in Berlin however, and his wife longs to return home.

Lisa Violetta Gaß toys with the prevalent clichés which surround the Vietnamese diaspora, from the illegal trade in cigarettes and an overriding restlessness, to successful integration and domestic bliss, only to challenge them one at a time with a series of genre motives in this searching analysis of the sense of alienation that has gradually evolved between two generations of Vietnamese migrants in Germany. TB