Yes, the title is generic and yes, a film about a refugee in Europe may sound like one of many, but push all that aside because Haider Rashid’s sensorial Europa is a work of immersive power. Set on the Bulgarian border, the film strips its story down to one essential: a young Iraqi man trying to survive in a forest where anti-migrant vigilantes and corrupt law enforcement officials are hunting him and others down. Cinematographer Jacopo Maria Carmella keeps the camera so close to star Adam Ali (casting directors take note) that his every frightened glance and breath is captured in a tense yet beautifully modulated rhythm of taut suspense and temporary distraction. Iraq’s Oscar submission, Europa premiered in Quinzaine and has been picking up awards at festivals including the Red Sea, where it took home both best director and best actor. Its modest scope yet significant impact should translate to worldwide distribution.
Iraqi-Italian Rashid has been steadily making films that delve into the immigrant experience (Tangled Up in Blue, It’s About to Rain), but Europa will likely be his breakthrough thanks to the way he creates a universality around a refugee’s nightmare while making it feel intimately connected to one young man. Although it’s being called a thriller, that moniker devalues its real-world urgency: this is no Hunger Games, and the precisely contained story it tells is one faced by countless men and women whose journey, at the risk of their lives, is too often neutered by news stories (and Ai Weiwei’s offensive Human Flow) that skirt over the dangers and reduce individual narratives to a generic catch-all experience. In reaching for comparisons, Egil Håskjold Larsen’s superb documentary 69 Minutes of 86 Days comes to mind, though Europa is both more primal and a work of fiction, informed by real incidents.
It’s nighttime and a group of refugees are bullied by a trafficker (Erfan Rashid) demanding more money to continue their journey. In a forested area along the Turkish-Bulgarian border, they’re surprised by armed men with guard dogs who try to round up the terrified men and women as helicopters sound overhead and bullets whizz past. Kamal (Ali) is caught but manages to escape and flees further into the forest, hyper-aware of every movement around him as he desperately tries to avoid the men literally hunting him down.
By reducing the story to its essence, Rashid forces the audience to concentrate on the terror Kamal experiences as he moves through the forest; to compare him to a tracked deer risks removing his humanity, which the film never does, and yet the parallel is not without merit. Kamal’s amplified senses, attuned to every snapped branch and moving figure, have an animalistic quality as he’s reduced to focus purely on survival after god knows what kind of horrific journey across from Iraq, not to mention the reasons why he risked his life to get to Europe. Forced to scavenge robins’ eggs, wash in a stream, hide in undergrowth or up a tree, he inevitably assumes the role of prey, and yet there are moments when his compassion forcefully takes over, such as when he finds a dead fellow émigré and provides him with a makeshift burial.
Unusually, the absence of biographical information in no way distances us from the protagonist, and the little tidbits we organically pick up, in addition to Ali’s projection of agitated intelligence, create a bond with the viewer that goes beyond the kind of simple ethical empathy utterly lacking in the official and unofficial so-called guardians hunting him down. We know he’s educated – he speaks some English, as opposed to a Bulgarian woman (Svetlana Yancheva) who reluctantly picks him up – which on its own connects him to art house audiences. It’s also worth underlining the sobering fact that this is happening on the edge of Europe, on our very doorstep, so when Ali ventures onto a road it comes as something of a shock to realize how close we are to such desperation, and how easy it is to lull ourselves into thinking of this inhumanity as being far removed from our lives.
The film’s narrative trajectory, combined with Rashid’s canny editing, allows for some respite, and Kamal’s need to be perpetually alert reasonably slackens at times when he’s temporarily distracted, only to be brought up sharp again by the renewed necessity for quickened attentiveness. It’s hard to conceive of the heightened state of edginess Ali had to maintain throughout the 18-day shoot, especially as the super-close camera tracks the smallest changes in expression, but his is a fearless, gutsy performance graced by small nuances, and Ali completely holds the screen.
In keeping with Rashid’s aim of creating an immersive experience, sound is given special attention and Giandomenico Petillo’s mix is a standout, placing us inside the forest so that we too become aware of insect noises, bird calls and each unexpected crackle of twig underfoot. Europa’s technical conception is highly tuned yet deceptively modest, especially in the storytelling; its impact however is much, much greater.
Director: Haider Rashid
Screenplay: Haider Rashid, Sonia Giannetto
Cast: Adam Ali, Svetlana Yancheva, Pietro Ciciriello, Mohamed Zouaoui, Erfan Rashid, Sohail Akhtar, Yousif Al Obaidi, Hajer Bouker, Anna Maria Buroni, Magdalena Kacharova Cholakova, Sibghat Mujtaba, Mehdi Sadouk
Producer: Haider Rashid
Executive producers: Abdullah Boushahri, Ivano Fucci, Michele Saragoni, Stefano Mutolo
Cinematography: Jacopo Maria Caramella
Production design: Francesco Bacci
Costume design: Alice Rinaldi
Editing: Haider Rashid, Sonia Giannetto
Sound: Giandomenico Petillo
Production company: Radical Plans (Italy), in association with Beyond Dreams Productions (Kuwait), Fair Play (Italy)
World Sales: MPM Premium
Venue: Red Sea International Film Festival (Competition); Cannes (Quinzaine)
In English, Arabic, Bulgarian
72 minutes
