Director: Loretta Pflaum, Lawrence Tooley
Script: Loretta Pflaum, Lawrence Tooley
Cast: Loretta Pflaum, Antje Hochholdinger, Jeremy Xido, Anghel Damian, George Pistereanu
Camera: Tom Jide Akinleminu
Editor: Lawrence Tooley
Location Sound: Manja Eberts
Sounddesign: Daniel Iribarren
Production Design: Lawrence Tooley
Costumes: Loretta Pflaum
Producers: Lawrence Tooley, Martin Maier
Production: AskimAskim Film
Co-production: Martin Maier Media

Elly Brandl accidently hits 24-year-old Alec with her car one night. Alec is a victim of human tra cking from Romania. Afraid of the authorities, he prefers to recuperate at Elly’s place rather than wait for an ambulance. Over the next few days, Alec tries to get back on his feet while Elly supports him with food and lodging. She constantly observes him as though he were an exotic animal in the zoo. But then the tide turns. Gatekeeper is bitter — and at the same time, also very, very funny.

After experiencing an unexpected brush with the often invisible world of human tracking I began to investigate stories of undocumented workers and their exploitation by various criminals. Soon I discovered that at least half of the tracked people in Europe had their proper documentation and were, at least on paper, lawfully employed, but living as slaves. I also just as quickly discovered that there were a number of remarkable lms on human tracking. So I knew I wasn’t going to do that kind of Film and began to ask what it was that really fascinated me. In a nutshell, it was the need to possess a malleable and highly subjective perception of the other. We hear of immigration crises but do not receive adequate explanations for them. There’s a good reason for this: we are not supposed to ask those questions, but to accept that there are „other“ people who somehow do not count. To control the image of another is a form of power, and my lm examines this on a personal scale.
(Lawrence Tooley)