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Escape to Freedom? 

Greece is known in the midst of the relocation flow. Suitably, this year's documentary film festival in Thessaloniki had its own section for films on this topic. 




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Europe is facing the largest wave of refugees since World War II, and a large proportion of these arrive via Greece. The 18. the release of the documentary film festival in the country's second largest city Thessaloniki last month dedicated a dedicated program to films on this theme, under the ambivalent and sadly appropriate title Refugees: Escape to Freedom? 

Transittøya. I This is Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees, who won Amnesty International's award for the Best Human Rights Film Festival, Mani Yassir Benchelah portrays Syrian children of various ages from the many refugee camps in Lebanon. Initially, the movie says that of the nearly four million people who have been fleeing Syria since March 2011, more than half are children. Many of them are in Lebanon, a country whose population now consists of almost a quarter of Syrians. Benchelah has been filming these children for a year, and the film provides a moving insight into how the experiences of the Civil War have characterized them (see the review here: Syria lost childhood).
For many refugees, the road goes around the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has become a kind of transit point for people who have crossed the Mediterranean and who is portrayed in the film Lampedusa in Winter. This documentary begins with a rescue vessel that picks up a dramatic emergency call from a boat with refugees on board that takes in water. However, Austrian director Jakob Brossman's focus is on daily life on the island during the sleepy winter season here.
It is a bold and interesting choice on the part of the filmmaker to portray the island through the locals, which he does through a consistently observational approach. Still, you may occasionally miss the foreigners' perspective, as well as some more background information on certain events. On the other hand, everyone in this small community is characterized by the many refugees who come to them – often under very dramatic circumstances. And the film not least shows how local forces are trying to help these people, while the outside world does not exactly seem overly involved in the state of the island.

Dream of Denmark. The Swedish film I am in Dublin gives an insight into the consequences of the so-called Dublin agreement, which means that asylum seekers must apply to the European country they first arrived. The film tells about the Somali teenager Ahmed, who came to Europe via Lampedusa before moving on to Sweden. He then became one of the many refugees moving around Europe without permission, because the Dublin cooperation between the countries prevents him from applying for legal residence where he is located. When filmmaker David Aronowitsch met Ahmed, he had been in hiding for three years. The director then chose him for a role as an asylum seeker in a fiction short film, and in the documentary, this actor's work becomes one of the approaches to Ahmed's real experiences.
Disregard this metafictional grip, has I am in Dublin some similarities with Danish Michael Graversen Dreaming of Denmark. This very strong documentary also portrays a teenager on the run, here through Wasiullah from Afghanistan, who is one of those close to 3000 single asylum seekers who have arrived in Denmark since 2010. Three years later, the country has become his home and he is in the process to master Danish as well as the mother tongue. But when, in the wake of his 18th birthday, he rejects the asylum application for the country he dreams of living in, he does, like most underage asylum seekers who get rejected, again according to the film: He disappears.
The film shows his subsequent illegal journey alone to Italy, where the young boy then has to wait another 14 months to have his application for this new country processed. Several of these months he is homeless and lives on the street.
The filmmaker has been following Wasiullah for several years, and in other words, started the film project long before the recent increase in refugees made it even more fiery news. He has come very close to his charismatic and honest main character, who appears as an ordinary teenager who hangs out with friends and flirts with girls, but who is also marked by both past and present trauma. Among other things, we are told that he has problems with memory, and at a very difficult time – which is also very painful to witness – he does not recognize either the director or his best friend from the asylum reception in Denmark.
Gradually, the filmmaker also becomes more present in front of the camera, as his desperate friend obviously needs assistance in various situations. And so the film also comes into the documentary's dilemma about whether to intervene in what they document, without Graversen commenting directly on it. It is by no means hard to understand that the filmmaker is trying to help his main character, and here you can also see a parallel to how Norwegian filmmaker Margreth Olin personally involved himself for the minor asylum seekers she filmed in her documentary The others.

When the filmmaker met Ahmed, he had been hiding for three years. The director then chose him for a role as an asylum seeker in a fiction short film.

No Norwegian. Olin's 2012 film is probably too old, but no other Norwegian films were found in this program in Thessaloniki, which otherwise had full Scandinavian representation. (Åse Svenheim Drivenes' Maipo – Dancing Child was however selected for another program team, and in addition a few Norwegian co-productions were shown at the festival.)
To be present at a film festival in a country that is in economic crisis and at the same time standing in the midst of the refugee stream is in itself a special experience for a Norwegian. While the already challenged Greeks are trying to do what they can for the masses of desperate people who come to them, the rich country I come from – relatively untouched as it is from the financial crisis – is trying to introduce Europe's strictest asylum and immigration policy. That, in the face of the extraordinary refugee situation, we allow our policies in this area to be dictated by a minister most concerned with keeping people out, is directly disgraceful. Hopefully, more Norwegian documentary filmmakers will get involved in this theme, not least because films like the ones at the Thessaloniki festival are strong and necessary reminders that this is actually about people.

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