Europa is Haider Rashid’s brutal examination of the refugee crisis inspired by the real-world acts of violence in Bulgaria.
It’s unflinching. The “Migrant Hunters” are abhorrent and Mr. Rashid makes the wise decision to be very selective of when to subtitle their dialogue.
The movie never really introduces you to the protagonist Kamal (played by Adam Ali) except in his struggle to survive. We don’t know his past; we don’t know if there’s anyone he’s trying to get to, and we don’t know if he has any family left. One of the things he clings to, part of his hold on humanity, is a mantra (a poem or prayer) to his mum. He speaks it at the beginning of his fight for his life and again at the end of the movie. The lack of information about him allows him to stand in as an everyman for the refugee who faces untold horrors to try and live. You needn’t know his story to understand if going back was an option he would because onwards leads to possible death, so you must conclude that going back is certain death.
The film used camera work and sound (particularly Adam Ali’s breathing) to maintain danger. There was a scene of him climbing a tree that was an achievement in both filmmaking and acting. I was so distracted trying to figure out how they accomplished the feat of filming it that, for a second, I forgot why he was climbing the tree. But the fear expressed by Mr. Ali as Kamal brought me back into the scene right in time for a different migrant to get shot down by the hunters just below the tree.
Kamal is a man that tries to cling to his humanity even as he’s forced to do unimaginable things. He must rob the body of someone because his shoes are broken. And yet, he couldn’t leave the body without trying to cover and say a prayer over him. These are things that took time and left him exposed, neither of which he could afford, but his soul needed to try and give the dead man some dignity in death. However, because the Migrant Hunters see Kamal and all Muslims as terrorists, I knew that him saying a prayer was likely to lead to gunshots. It did.
Kamal kills a man in the ensuing struggle, but not before receiving more injuries to his person. As he flees the other advancing hunters, he has to climb a cliff face. Adam Ali portrays this struggle so convincingly. It’s slow, it’s arduous, and it takes effort. Because of the filming and sound the viewer is right along on the journey and doesn’t get to look away as he pushes himself to reach the top, to keep surviving.
His first moment of maybe rescue from the Migrant Hunters is a lady who stops for him in his car. But they are unable to communicate, and Kamal is nervous because he’s still in fight or flight. I don’t know if the lady started out against him but as they drove you could see them both getting more and more suspicious/uncomfortable with each other. He flees her car when she yells something at him after hearing something on the radio (again no subtitles).
While he was in the car, they pass a Migrant Hunter on an ATV. This is an allusion to what some of the real people that inspired the Migrant Hunters rode around on.
He constantly has to make hard decisions that could have life and death consequences. He makes a fire at night. I don’t know if it was cold enough that he needed a fire to prevent freezing at night, but I think the choice at that time was that he needed it for warmth, for comfort, to feel human, even though it risked revealing his location. And a fire at night does reveal a location if anyone is near enough.
Later when Kamal thinks he’s about to die he utters, “I killed a man,” because even though the man he killed attacked him, and was going to kill him if Kamal didn’t kill him, he still carried that guilt. It was a weight on him that he didn’t want to carry anymore. A weight that he never should’ve been burden with.
It’s not an easy film to watch, but it’s hard to look away from.
Premiered at Cannes as part of the Director’s Fortnight.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.