The dehumanising experience of being looked at and exoticised or scrutinised as a strange entity, as opposed to being really seen and recognised in one’s authentic selfhood, is at the heart of Niki Padidar’s debut feature All You See, a stylised, highly conceptual documentary about the reductive perceptions and microaggressions that migrants to the Netherlands are subjected to on a daily basis, even after living there for decades. Padidar, who moved to the Netherlands from Iran when she was seven years old, enters into dialogue with three others who have relocated there. Two youngsters have newly arrived — Hanna from Ukraine, and Sofia from the UK — and are scrambling to make sense of their environment and blend in with their peers. The cues they need to navigate are overwhelming, as they receive a deluge of advice and tactless comments from schoolmates, or recall the familiar things they miss. Khadija, who fled political turmoil in Somalia 27 years ago, is still treated as a newcomer who does not fully belong by many Dutch inhabitants around her. Her good-humoured, slightly world-weary reflections on the barrage of indignities everyday life in Rotterdam, under the gaze of a sheltered populace often oblivious to their own prejudices, provide strong backbone to a film that is over-busy and at times gimmicky in its multiple animated and live-action visual conceits. Though its form means it may struggle to break out beyond niche creative documentary slots, it offers substantial pause for thought for audiences on superficial ways of seeing the other, and as such was an inspired choice for IDFA’s opening film to set an agenda for challenging Dutch audiences in particularly politically divisive times.
In a documentary at pains to recreate an immersive sense of dislocation within one’s environment, the protagonists are often shown literally out of place, sitting against a blank studio-style wall, or in small grey boxes with a few items of makeshift decor inside (a desk and mirror here, or a bird-cage there), suggesting a mere semblance or approximation of being at home, with none of the comfort or secure belonging that this refuge should bring. Imagery and video of their respective countries of origin is sometimes projected onto the walls, creating a multi-layered sense of fracture, and a sense of the vivid traces of elsewhere in their emotional worlds. Memory takes on a dreamlike, haunting ambience, as rooms revisited in the mind are recreated, now empty, on-screen (the abode of Padidar’s grandparents occupies an evocative space of unreality, as light sparkles through its chandeliers.) At other times, we follow a protagonist’s point of view as she walks through Dutch cityscapes of concrete coldness, while the wind whistles. Subjectivities of seeing and being seen inform camerawork that presents the gaze as a tool of power. Conversation often comes to us in voice-over, in a break between image and sound that further fragments inner emotional life off from an alienating environment.
Khadija recalls an outpouring of grief from a Dutch workmate whose pet ferret had just died, and the pressure of having to react with the appropriate amount of empathy expected in the situation, despite the fact that half of her family had been decapitated in front of her in Somalia — a weight of trauma she instinctively feels the distraught colleague would be unable to understand. Intent on making this woman feel as comfortable as possible, and not wanting to damage her further by revealing her own shocking “baggage,” Khadija keeps her history to herself. Immigrants, we understand from such anecdotes, too often carry the greater burden of emotional labour in making the atmosphere smooth around them, yet are left alone with their own wounds to navigate. To “participate joyfully” is considered by the Dutch the way to integrate, after all, and this attitude means keeping darker aspects of one’s past unmentioned, as one “constantly auditions” for acceptance. While being genuinely known still feels out of reach even to the women long-established as residents, others’ superficial curiosity means being addressed by strangers numerous times a day in public, with all manner of offensive questions, from whether one is circumcised, to whether one tans in the sun. Far from bitterly complaining, as she would surely be justified in doing, Khadija, having learnt to minimise inconvenience to others, even in the face of disrespect, simply quietly lives with this. “If you wanted to talk about these things it would take you all day, and you’d need a psychologist on your speed-dial 24/7,” she says, with typical resigned humour. The film, to its great credit, returns some agency to its protagonists over how they are seen, while foregrounding for viewers the impact of microaggressions that are often let slide, in a project that by including a very young migrant generation is also a vehicle toward greater understanding for their Dutch futures.
Director: Niki Padidar
Cinematographer: Jean Counet, Jefrim Rothuizen
Editing: Niki Padidar, Albert Markus, Festus Toll
Cast: Dewi Bus, Hanna Khomyk, Khadija Sabriye, Sofia Bonito Martins
Producer: Menna Laura Meijer
Animation: Anton Mishenin
Sound: Diego van Uden
Music: Fin Greenall
Production company: Mint Film Office (Netherlands)
Sales: Mint Film Office (Netherlands)
Venue: IDFA
In Dutch
72 minutes
