Acceptance through cinema

Arrival and departure, as well as reunion, separation, destiny and emotion – these are words that bring to mind the images of cinema. Still, stories of migration are not often told in fictional films. Migrants' departures and arrivals seem to be different from others. They seem to tell the story of a population rather than that of an individual, thus making it difficult to bring out individual characters.

Stories of migration require the methods of documentary films. And yet they are first seen in the form of news reports. On TV news broadcasts, these arriving and departing characters appear and disappear fast, like at a railway station. The documentary film directors, instead, are full of drive to confront reality and patiently render it comprehensible. The Arrivals (Les arrivants, 2009) by Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard is a great example of this. They take their cameras into a Parisian reception centre for illegal immigrants, amongst those arriving with big demands, since they have nothing left. The camera shows also the employees in the reception centre who with limited resources try to fulfil the needs of the arrivals. The arrivals take place within a frame of material constraints and laws. By means of filming this clearly imperfect world can be framed in a different way. The camera creates connections and a place in time that is temporary yet ineffaceable, giving eternal existence to those few migrants captured on film. Whether they have arrived or are still on their way, images of them will be engrained in our minds.

In a world where a migrant’s identity is often reduced to a fingerprint, documentary film directors leave a different kind of imprint. Paradoxically, these observers of the real and the concrete manage to capture something immaterial: the soul, the spirit, the faith. The Arrivals begins with a captivating image of a statue of the elephant god arriving at a Hindu community in Paris. In An Orchard in the Desert (La pépinière du désert, 2009) by Laurent Chevallier, Mostafa, an expatriate returned home, has decided to stay in his country instead of leaving for Europe. He has become an imam whose enlightened advice help the people of the village live in the modern world. Director Sani Elhajd Magori offers yet another perspective on migration. For the Best & for the Onion (Pour le meilleur et pour l'oignon, 2008) is a story of a young boy and a young girl who leave their families after their marriage; the departure, the sacrament, the blessing – all these things seem to be interconnected.

These films represent the need for spirituality, for holy or divine protection, that has been given many possible meanings. It is presented as hope and faith in a better future, and as the strength – that not all migrants have – which comes from one’s belief in one’s own story, despite all hardship. This faith seems to be something obliged; a requirement for being able to retain one’s soul despite being rootless, or to be able to stay in one’s home country like Mostafa. Migration questions require a social and political approach because laws are necessary, but the dimension of the human spirit could enlighten ongoing conversations and help us understand these issues in all their complexity. Only documentary cinema can present this dimension justly and it deserves to be acknowledged for that.

Frédéric Strauss
Media officer for the Nordic Countries
French Embassy in Sweden

Translation by Heini Lilja