The False Promise of Advancement

The False Promise of Advancement (2025)

DocumentaryTV Movie

Origin sticks like shit to your shoe! That's what Marlen Hobrack says, who grew up as a working-class child in Bautzen. But the promise of the old Federal Republic was that you can become anything if you just try hard enough. But that no longer applies. So is class in Germany fixed from birth? Have we long been living in a country in which origin and family background are more important for future prospects than individual performance and commitment? In Germany, it takes six generations to rise from poverty to the middle class, in Denmark only two generations. Those affected reflect on their life stories, the burden of their social origins, the wrong and right turning points for social advancement, as classified by social researchers. They talk of pride and shame, of financial hardship and wealth, of origin and future, of growing up and moving up in this Germany with its entrenched selection mechanisms for social advancement.

Directors: Dirk Schneider, Ariane Riecker.

Casts

	Marlen Hobrack as Self - Interviewee
	Scott Wempe as Self - Interviewee
	Natalya Nepomnyashcha as Self - Interviewee
	Jörg Theobald as Self - Interviewee
	Stephanie zu Guttenberg as Self - Interviewee
	Cawa Younosi as Self - Interviewee
	Martyna Linartas as Self - Interviewee
	Marcel Helbig as Self - Interviewee
	Michael Hartmann as Self - Interviewee
	Ciani-Sophia Höder as Self - Interviewee
	Eva Voss as Self - Interviewee
	Joe Kaeser as Self (archive footage)
	Frank-Walter Steinmeier as Self (archive footage)
	Sky du Mont as Self (archive footage)
	Harry S. Truman as Self (archive footage)
	Winston Churchill as Self (archive footage)

Crew