Keyword Borders

‘The Great Wall has been completed at its most southerly point.’ So begins Kafka’s short story ‘At the Building of the Great Wall of China’, and so, at Europe’s heavily militarised south-eastern frontier, begins this film. In the shadow of its own narratives of freedom, Europe has been quietly building its own great wall. Like its famous Chinese precursor, this wall has been piecemeal in construction, diverse in form and dubious in utility. Gradually cohering across the continent, this system of enclosure and exclusion is urged upon a populace seemingly willing to accept its necessity and to contribute to its building.

On the border, the line as principle of property and belonging reaches an extreme dimension where it physically defines the sphere of its relations. Those who transgress it reconstruct these imaginary lines on a daily basis, redefining the traditional geography and occupying the non-spaces where others live in a temporary form of existence. These others, the non-citizens, are phantasmtic, exchangeable parts of a flexible market. Made invisible, they are permanently controlled persons. Under the pretext of a greater civilian security, they are kept clear from the public spaces reserved for the citizens with rights and pushed into non-public spaces, which are run by state and military surveillance, multinational operations servicing a European market and non-governmental organisations.

A feature-length documentary forming a diptych at each end of France. Two guided visits through the eyes of the people who inhabit each place. In Marseille, a deteriorated housing project is surrounded by walls cutting it off from the neighbouring private properties. In Calais, the fences and and the barbwire aim to push back the refugees hoping to reach the UK and build a better life there. "Écoute les murs tomber" (Listen to the Walls Fall) shows how human beings, moved by the desire to come and go, to live and to set themselves free from restrictions and dead ends, bypass what imprison them, prevent them and restrain them. When coming face-to-face with walls, "Écoute les murs tomber" offers pathways of hope.

In Dubai, two roomies—one Indian, one Pakistani—are locked in a fierce but hilarious rivalry. But when a love triangle shakes things up, their bromance goes next level, showing that deep down, they’re all about unity beyond borders.

Once, after being interrogated at the border, I saw a long fence through the car window. It was tinkling in the wind, overgrown with ruderal plants. That charged image was a manifestation not only of oppression but of resistance and desire. ||||||||/__ | is a lengthy passage that captures the liminal conditions of the exiled body. In emigration and exile, determination is juxtaposed with vulnerability: one must constantly break down barriers, including those of one's own body. The film employs various visual and sound techniques and performative gestures that sensitize surfaces, boundaries, media, and spaces.