(ongoing) When growing up together, siblings are inseparably tied to each other – whether they like it or not. During their childhood, they experience their relationships most intensively. For me growing up without my five siblings would have been unimaginable. When I became a mother myself for the first time, it was a great desire that my daughter would also have the chance to experience "growing up together". Brothers and sisters usually know each other better than anyone else and often support each other for life. But what used to be so natural for myself as a child, became more and more special to me as a grown-up: after a few miscarriages and a couple of years of seeming infertility it wasn’t easy to explain to my daughter why she would probably be an only child. However, her childlike desire for a brother or sister was tremendously huge. And thus, it was Mila who told me one morning when I came out of the shower, “Mummy, do you know that there is a baby in your belly?” My husband and I had already given up all hope, but in her childish sensitivity, Mila noticed my pregnancy with her brother Yuri in the very first weeks already. Yuri was born in our home in Rome the night before Mila’s sixth birthday. When she first saw him, she only said: “Finally you are here! Now we are the two of us!” “Growing (UP) together” is a personal long term project about the joint growing up of my two children Mila and Yuri, and about their relationship with each other as sister and brother. However, their relationship will be evolving, and it might be one of the most valuable sources for strength and support in their adult life.

(ongoing) ‘A good marriage starts with tears,’ says an famous Kyrgyz proverb. Although I am originally from Kyrgyzstan, I only began to understand the violence behind this famous Kyrgyz proverb and the depth of the wounded souls they often leave when I met Jamilia. She is named after the main character from the worldwide known novel "Jamilia" of Chingiz Aitmatov. A story of two young lovers who leave their village and break a strong tradition to be able to live together. A story which tells with melancholy and full of tenderness the power of love that overrides everything. But countless stories of Kyrgyz women are stories of violence and tears. There is, for example, Samira. She is only one of around 12.000 to 15.000 annually for marriage kidnapped women according to the latest available data in Kyrgyzstan. She summed up in her handwriting: "He liked me, the man who kidnapped me, but I DID NOT like him. I could not imagine me with him, couldn't imagine it at all. And here is the result. After the kidnapping, I took some pills, I felt in a coma, and I became an invalid (chronically emotional distress). I want to ask him - How is your life going? My life is broken. I am lonely… Sick... " Samira survived her suicide attempt after she became a victim of the custom Ala Kachuu which means roughly translated "grab and run." "I am Jamilia" focuces on women of different ages and from different parts of Kyrgyzstan. Each woman has her own story. But all of them have one thing in common: they all have been kidnapped to get married. Some victims described the brutality of this practice. Often a group of young men grab a young woman or even a high school student in broad daylight, taking her violently into a car and driving away no matter if she is in panic, struggling, screaming and weeping. Once abducted, the young woman is taken immediately to the family of the would-be groom and subjected to psychological pressure by his female relatives. In too many cases, the groom will rape his kidnapped bride to prevent her from returning to her family due to shame. Bride kidnapping is a custom with deep roots, it raised and got a massive problem after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But there is an increasing reflection also on the psychological implications of those affected. Especially women who suffered lifelong under their traumatic experience being kidnapped want a different start into a marriage for their own children, both for their daughters and for their sons.

(ongoing) Born and raised in the former Soviet Union, but living in Europe, I´m used to different situations and conversations and people asking me a simple question, just like “Where are you originally from?”. But this question is not an easy one to me and mostly ends up with a long conversation about a widely unknown little country in Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan. But I am not from today’s Kyrgyzstan. At that time during my childhood, it was part of the Soviet Union. And so, memories of my early childhood are mostly memories of the time of a "Soviet child" and of a country that no longer exists in this way. Today's Kyrgyzstan is an independent and democratic country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent independence of the country in 1991, there was a time of important political and social changes for the country and the region. The transition from the Soviet system to independence was not an easy one. The Kyrgyz nation went through difficult times of many years of socio-economic hardship that still continues today, especially in the rural parts of Kyrgyzstan. My project “Kyrgyzstan diary” is my personal view on a post-Soviet country. I see the dichotomy between the modern and the old. The varied images of traveling, and documentaries of daily life situations and special moments are my personal experiences and my encounters in a country which I still feel to be part of. Each time I am visiting the land of my childhood, I discover new unseen daily life moments. Sometimes just short moments which maybe seem to be unimportant. But all together they complete a little bit more my understanding of this country.

"Do you sometimes imagine you are a swallow? I like swallows a lot. They live where they feel good and free. In the summertime, they live with us in Kyrgyzstan", explains Asel while she is walking in the middle of the main street of the little village by mountain surrounded. Eight-year-old Asel lives in a village, about 60 km from the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. Asel is immensely proud to know already how to can fruits and vegetables for the wintertime. She knows precisely the different steps because she always helps her mother. Since the birth of her little brother, her parents depend on her and the support of her older brother Aziz (12 years) in all daily tasks. Asel feeds the chickens, wipes the dust in the house, and takes care of her little brother. But she never complains. Instead, Asel is asking: "Can you hear it? The creek carries more water today than usual," while she is picking red tomatoes from the family's field for her mother to cook dinner. She always finds the time to stop for a moment and to observe the little things in her life. "Swallows in my world" is firstly a documentary work about the life of a little girl and her Kyrgyz family in a small village in Kyrgyzstan. It is the story of a family that shows that children do not need much, but they need to dream and to feel comfortable in their world. "I have never been behind all the mountains that surround our village. They are so far away and incredibly high. But my father told me that behind these mountains there are even more and even much higher mountains. He knows it because he went already far away. I am happy he returned to us. Sometimes I wonder how the little swallows manage it to fly over all these high mountains to us. I think because they like us very much," describes Asel in her pure childhood imagination.