On The Border

The Nigerien city Agadez is one of those places that in 2024 anyone would be correct to refer to as intrinsically problematic—and that’s because of its geographical position: at the outpost of Africa and near the mouth of Europe. In centuries gone past, the city was an important venue for trade because of its location in the Sahara. It retains that commercial usefulness even today but there’s a twist: since the 2010s, its most famous cargo is humans.

For many migrants seeking to go to Europe through the Sahara, Agadez is the last port before Libya, a country one might call the last African stand for the immigrant dreaming of a better life in Europe. This, of course, means that the EU is interested in the area.

On The Border—a new documentary directed by Gerald Igor Hauzenberger and Gabriela Schild and showing in competition at IDFA—presents the current situation in the region as mediated by some of its own people. Tilla Amadou is a radio presenter. Ahmed Dizzi is an old salesman visited by tragedy but with a clear memory of his homeland’s better days. Rhissa Feltou is a politician who used to be mayor. All three are highly telegenic presences, which probably means Hauzenberger and Schild worked hard at getting these subjects or were incredibly lucky.

Whatever the case, the directors know what great assets they have, as they allow these deeply knowledgeable men and woman to explain what is ailing Agadez. Depending on your interpretation of the issues, the problem began with migrants who discovered the Agadez route and bombarded the place, or it began with the Europeans who have tried to stop the migrants from even embarking on the journey to Libya.

Not long after learning that the city had become popular with migrants, the EU worked out an arrangement with the Niger government that would see harsh treatment visited on both the fleeing migrant and those who helped her on the next stage of the journey. This action pretty much crumbled one of the mainstays of the Agadez economy as people formerly employed by the informal migrant transportation industry became unemployed. In the aftermath, drugs, joblessness, and crime rose. It didn’t help that the area’s tourism economy had been killed off by the Tuareg rebellion in the late 2000s.

In one scene, showing a meeting with people in the community and a pen-wielding European representative, the source of the issues is presented by an older woman who receives applause. But it is not quite clear if—or what—the European will do subsequently.

It is quite understandable if the EU is clueless as to what to do. Its main interest in the area is the prevention of migration through that porous border. It bargained with the Nigerien government to get its wishes attended to: for setting up the harsher policies, the African country was given a hunk of cash.

It is the kind of thing that happens when an organisation throws money to fix a problem that time and more strategic thought might have solved. For their part, the Nigerien government seems to have ceded its own responsibility to anyone but themselves.

In one scene, Feltou, the politician, visits another political leader and asks why the environment is unkempt. There is no real response. Very conspicuously, this other leader has given up. A brutal desert has been deserted by its own leadership.

The filmmakers do not intervene onscreen on attempt to draw connections; they just let the people they’ve chosen as subjects tell the story of their city. They also allow the visuals, which as ironies go are frequently beautiful, say what isn’t said. But for the viewer alert to subtext, part of the problem of Agadez (and other African cities and countries) can be summed up in a leadership that has given up on its responsibilities without leaving the position that has earned them a lofty status in their communities. They show trees covered in plastic that stalls their growth and one of their subjects deploys it as a political metaphor. This is very good political filmmaking.

It is also a very engaging work, even for those who have no dog in this fight. And that’s because cinematographer Thomas Eirich-Schneider makes some beautiful images out of the desert. But, above all else, On The Border is a project with a potentially significant draw outside of festivals and classrooms because the directors have gotten astute middlemen as mediators.

So, maybe therein lies a trick other European filmmakers can imbibe when filming nonfiction outside of their continent: allow the (smart and interested) locals tell their own story. The result of that decision in On The Border is quietly spectacular.