Laya Maheshwari was selected as part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam Trainee Project for Young Critics. He’s traveled from his home in Mumbai to attend and report on the festival and participate in the fest’s talent development program.
The 43rd International Film Festival Rotterdam, currently underway, has a program titled The State of Europe. Artistic director Rutger Wolfson wanted to focus on European culture, identity and politics in an important election year for the continent. He described the inspiration behind the program thus: “The historical project of the European unification has lost much of its luster. Peace and prosperity, the two main forces that have driven Europe, are still relevant today but feel worn out.”
The section’s lineup is diverse, with films such as the acclaimed British drama The Selfish Giant and Joaquim Pinto’s striking docu-diary What Now? Remind Me. However, two documentaries in particular seemed interesting to me: Vlad Petri’s Where Are You Bucharest? from Romania and Iva Radivojevic’s Evaporating Borders from Cyprus. In the former, Petri followed protesters on the streets of Romania two years ago. The resulting documentary is a compilation of raw footage. On the other hand, Radivojevic tries to investigate the effects of immigration on Cyprus, one of the easiest ports of entry into the mythical European Union.
I don’t think either film fully works. Bucharest is a mediocre failure, as Petri does not coalesce the film into a smooth whole. While trying to track Romania’s identity crisis, the documentary ends up suffering from one itself, namely: Who is it for? There are too few contextual details for someone ignorant of the local situation (like me), while people who are aware of Romania’s ground realities informed me they didn’t find any new perspective in the work. Petri aims for something ambitious here, attempting to paint the protests as a theater of the absurd; the protesters themselves don’t know what they are protesting about or against. There are a few comedic sequences with some people using the situation to further their own motives, but these stand at odds with the more straight-faced and somber portions of the film. The end result is these two approaches nullify each other’s impact.
A still from ‘Evaporating Borders’.
Evaporating Borders fares a bit better, but is nowhere close to a home run. Some sequences in the film are genuinely impactful; these ride mainly on the power of the subject. Seeing someone be denied asylum is affecting, as is the sorry state of refugee centers. However, the documentary’s analysis starts and ends at the most obvious topics, such as the populace’s frustration with welfare benefits handed out to immigrants. That these are thorny issues worldwide today is well known. For any analysis to have some weight, it must take this as a given and go beyond. Otherwise, there is nothing new to serve as a takeaway.
These two documentaries came off as siblings for me because both bust open the myth of Europe as a picture-perfect fairy tale. As someone who has been fascinated by the continent and life in the EU, I have often dreamed of moving there. Some strong moments in Evaporating Borders acknowledge that; idyllic shots of Cypriot streets or glimpses of people leisurely strolling in the market perpetuate the dream. In Bucharest, the footage of citizens ranting against curfews and the totalitarian police are not far off from rough days in India.
For that, I am grateful to the makers. Now, if only the documentaries themselves were better.