Backwood Germany

Starting all over again, that’s how it began: Born in Beirut, Amin Ballouz escaped from Lebanon as a 17 year old during the civil war. After surviving an odyssey, he studied medicine in the GDR. Shortly before the wall came down he reached the West and practiced in London and Paris. In the noughties he came back to Germany as a country doctor in the backwoods of the eastern province Uckermark – one of the poorest parts of Germany. Ballouz speaks of uniqueness, when he’s talking about the locals he became acquainted with. Their stories are gleaming with German history, war and post-war, the current turbulences of a world crisis successively colliding with the everyday life in a gradually deserted swathe of land. Many of his patients share the doctors fate of being forever expelled, the unavoidable getaway from home – “So tell me doctor: where are we going this time?”