In the ethnographic documentary film The Prince of Shoes, viewers accompany the Tunisian-born shoemaker Faical Soei for a day through his shop in downtown Göttingen. From the various work processes involved in manufacturing a shoe, to living together with friends, colleagues and customers in downtown Göttingen, to his personal life, the film creates a multifaceted image of a supposedly unimpressive shoe shop. In addition to the protagonist’s manual skills and know-how, the focus is on neighbourly life in Theaterstraße where his shop is situated and the negotiation of identity, profession and vocation.
Alexander Chenchenko, Édi Kettemann, and Jelena Brezac are three filmmakers with different backgrounds who found their paths meeting at their common interest for ethnography. It was during the Summer School for Ethnographic Film at the University of Göttingen where they first met, and where an immediate friendship between the three was born. Friendship – a common and shared space where intimacy lives in. It is undoubtedly the strength of this intimacy that gave nature to such an intense ethnographic and filmic experience, finally yielding in the relationship created with the enchanting prince, its surroundings, and the resulting motion picture The Prince of Shoes.