Synopsis

In a classroom in Sicily, just inside the walls of Fortress Europe, recently arrived refugees receive lessons from a teacher (Valentijn Dhaenens) who has some rather unbalanced traits.
One moment he mercilessly rejects the refugees—the next, mollifyingly, he embraces them. Operating at the intersection of documentary and fiction, Stranger in Paradise investigates the power relations between Europe and refugees

Director

• 

  Guido Hendrikx
  

  Among Us (2014)
  Escort (2013)
  Day is Done (2010)

  I tried to look down on the Earth from above. Contemplatively, and far removed from moral judgements. During this exercise men turned into mice. Mice wandering around in circles, driven by fear, hope, or dispassionate pragmatism and surrounded by a strong smell of complacency.
  It started in May 2013, with a visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa. There, I met some of the migrants who have landed up there, their hopeful dreams for the future seeming to clash with a Europe that has little to offer them. The power relation I filtered from this personal experience - how the lucky ones treat the desire for luck in
  others—kept me busy.
  I wanted to make the power relationship I observed from a distance (and then later, during the research phase, up close) not so much visible, as feelable, by holding up a mirror for the audience, the refugees and myself. A reflective account on what we in Europe named ‘the refugee crisis’. Since I think it’s not a bad thing to first look at ourselves before we try to represent the suffering of the other.

Review

The rhythmical montage of film footage with narration over commands attention for the first five minutes, when the film starts. From the image of The Arrival of the Train of the Lumière brothers to the history of the 20th century that people in the southern hemisphere moved into the northern hemisphere, the documentary presents the philosophical thoughts and images about the diasporas. The war, invasion, violence, change of borders, colonialism, and competition for limited resources, what have they resulted in now in the 21st century? <Stranger in Paradise> reconstructs the political and ethical situations of the Western European countries into which there has been an inflow of African and Syrian refugees in a unique way of combining fiction and documentary. Divided into three acts after the montage of film footage, it presents the conversation scene of a white Immigration officer with refugees and immigrants from Africa and Arab region, in a lecture room, in the Netherlands. While the immigrants state that they come to Europe seeking for good income, education, and safe living conditions, the officer, a white European man, examines their statement and demand and argues them one by one. He said coldly and selfishly that the Europe has a difficult time with the influx of immigrants, due to the long history of the religious war between Christianity and Islam, and to the events in the 21st century including the Syrian civil war. The handheld camera, having recorded in-depth their conversations in the room, shows the subject of this film and the reflection of the director on his limits through an impressive long take scene in the epilogue. [Han Sun-hee]

Credits

• Director  Guido Hendrikx
• Producer  Frank van den Engel
• Cinematographer  Emo Weemhoff
• Editor  Lot Rossmark
• Music  Ella van der Woude, Juho Nurmela
• Sound  Tijn Hazen

Contribution & World Sales

• Contribution & World Sales  Jasmina Vignjevic
• Phone  31 622076717
• E-Mail  admin@syndicado.com