In Someone Else's Country

„Did you find it difficult pitching the film to festivals?” the director of „The Art of Moving” is asked in an interview, a film about a group of Syrian video-activists.

„Yes, some festivals were not interested as there were so many films coming from Syria or about refugees, and sometimes they didn't even want to see my film as the market is saturated.

We are more than five years away from the outbreak of one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades. Meanwhile, Western attitude passed from silence, to indignation and saturation. The endless news wave on this subject is just one of many waves to attract public attention. In an effort to raise awareness, an apparent saturation has been reached. Saturation is not, however, irreversible.

This "reversibility" is what the program "In Someone Else's Country" relies, looking for a change of perspective and for cinematic expressions to what is, in the end, almost impossible to express: the experience of exile.

For example, the experience of starting on a road that you do not know how and if you will finish. "69 Minutes of 86 Days" attempts it by adopting the perspective of Lean, a three-year-old girl; a perspective that reveals which the present wave of immigration as an inheritance for future generations.

Or the experience of coping with terrorist groups through journalistic activism, such as the independent groups Daya Al-Taseh and Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently do. The protagonists of "The Art of Moving" and "City of Ghosts" respectively, they question the stereotypical image of a refugee, who is often perceived as helpless, and highlighting the individual endurance in the face of atrocities.

Or the experience of finally arriving in another country, apparently safe, as in "Taste of Cement" When each hammer sounds like a tank fire, each new layer of cement resembles sea waves, and each thunder resounds like a machine gun, war becomes an endless experience that permanently infiltrates the mind.

At the same time, the humanitarian crisis in Syria is an opportunity to more carefully look at the way of thinking and treating immigrants and asylum seekers in general. Focused on the story of an Albanian family looking for asylum in Germany, "Deportation Class" notes how change of legal terms trigger social permutations, blocking whole families in a twilight area of ​​justice.

"In Someone Else's Country" questions the problematic grey area of ​​morality and justice in relation to the Other, observing the daily negotiations between the military and the social, between the juridical and the human.

Curatorial text and films presentations by Diana Mereoiu