Spectres are haunting Europe

synopsis

The Idomeni refugee camp housed people from the Middle East who were trying to cross the border into Europe. When the Greek police closed the camp, the refugees resisted and blocked a railway line used to deliver goods. Maria Kourkouta’s minimalist documentary not only observes these events but also presents carefully modeled static images that open up the space within and without the frame of view, and in the closing black-and-white sequence offers a poetic commentary. The result is a bleak portrait of a place where endless lines of refugees try to preserve the final remnants of their individual freedoms.

“This film is a call to welcome the refugees that cross the European borders, as well as the ghosts that return with them.”

biography

Maria Kourkouta (1982) is a Greek filmmaker and photographer living in France. She has been making short documentaries and experimental films since 2008, including the film collage Prelude 02 – 07 (2010, Jihlava 2011) and Epistrofi stin odo Ailolu (2013). For her feature-film debut Spectres sre haunting Europe, she collaborated with Greek author Niki Giannari.

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