LOGBOOK_SERBISTAN

“The streets here don’t look that much different than the ones we have in Africa either”, Lee states pragmatically, as he takes a look around a small Serbian city. The damages caused by the flood that hit large portions of the Balkans in spring 2014 have to be repaired and Lee and the other refugees are here to help clean up. Praying between backhoes and mud. Being treated gruffly by the director of the shelter for asylum seekers. Bargaining hard with the “illegal” taxi driver, who is supposed to bring them to the Hungarian border as “illegal” immigrants. Playing football now and then for the “home team” or dancing the Kolo at the Bean Festival out in the country. That’s how life can look for people stranded against their will in the Balkans after the long escape from Afghanistan, Syria, Ghana, Cameroon. It was only supposed to be a stopover, Serbia – or is it perhaps really the kind of place where one could settle down for good? Želimir Žilnik, one of the most important representatives of the Yugoslav Black Wave of the 1960’s and one of the most important Serbian filmmakers to this day, follows his protagonists with the docu-fiction style that he’s largely responsible for shaping. As in his previous film FORTRESS EUROPE, in doing so he also holds up a mirror to Europe’s restrictive immigration policies.