By Norika Sefa (Kosovo)
Stories of shifting borders and cultural paradigms; films that make us think about the impact of immigration upon abstract notions of nationhood. These are especially good at identifying trends in and sparking controversial debates about practices of othering, difference and exclusion.
Evaporating Borders, made by Iva Radivojevic, part of the Balkan Dox category at this edition of DokuFest, portrays within 5 chapters the migrant experience on the island of Cyprus, illustrating the empathy and ability to capture the fears and frustrations of people, which is more like a visual commentary on their history, tolerance, discrimination and belonging. Themes of nation, escape and return also haunt the director of Endless Escape, Eternal Return, Harutyun Khachatryan, who has been exploring a national portrait of and rootlessness among Armenian exiles for many years now.
This movie is the first part of 5 documentaries and Khachatryan is portraying the life of Hayk, a theater director settled in Moscow. A film that looks on a feeling of fullness and escaping from a world where people look to the national for their identity becomes so performative we lose all sense of subjectivity and reflexivity. This makes Hayk take a distance from people and live among animals who will not ask for such definitions. Hayk’s adventures take a Don Quixote-like enthusiasm for description, allowing him to identify with an illusionary world where he can feel safer and in command of himself.
Endless Escape was part of the Armenian Perspective, a special category at this year’s edition of the festival. Another film, Sabidin Aliu’s Between Two Worlds, meanwhile, explores the vicissitudes of Macedonians in Swaziland struggling with the dilemma of staying there forever or returning to their native country. This is not investing on space and time that gave one a loose feeling, emptiness and a nostalgic for the old times.
These films observe what it means to be without a country without getting into reactionary political statements, and they don’t clearly express their directors’ opinion or stance. Immigration still seems an issue sparking a lot of complex debates without any promising solution. Within this category of films we meet the complex psychosocial process of lasting effects on an individual’s identity. So long as we find our social and cultural identities being founded through difference and shaped in relation to societal norms we will meet people struggling with “culture shock”. There will perhaps be a lot of other good, detailed films rich on facts about those troubles to come, but will there be a director to express a concise personal statement?
