By Randall Rowe, PhD Student, Department of Slavic and Eastern European Languages and Cultures

On January 19th, the Global Mobility project hosted a film screening at the Wexner Center for the Arts of The Other Side of Hope (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 2017). This film depicts the experience of a Syrian refugee who has fled to Finland to apply for asylum. One of the protagonists, Khaled, has encountered carnage in his home city of Aleppo, was separated from his sister when fleeing across the Turkish border, and was assaulted by Polish neo-Nazis. Upon arriving in Finland via a shipping container, Khaled meets Wikström, a middle-aged man who has a recent windfall of cash from a successful poker game. Their first meeting occurs after Khaled has escaped a detention center (after being denied refuge and sentenced to deportation) and is apprehended and jumped by racist thugs of the “Finnish Liberation” movement. When Wikström encounters an injured Khaled outside of his restaurant, a fight between the two protagonists breaks out and comically ends rather quickly with Khaled working in Wikström’s restaurant. The unlikely gang of coworkers come to accept Khaled into their ranks, and they band together to help bring Khaled’s sister to Finland. After successfully arriving in Finland from Lithuania, Khaled’s sister seeks asylum at the police station just as Khaled had done. Indeed, many migrants leave their countries of origin with the hope that their situation will improve, but a migrant’s journey is often long and treacherous. The Other Side of Hope attempts to address the migration experience through Khaled’s story of uncertainty, disappointment, and – finally – reunion.

Khaled, in a somewhat typical situation for refugees, is subjected to long periods of waiting that often end in rejection. He seeks asylum through the official channels and is then assigned to a detention facility, where he waits for his fate to be handed to him by a court. Khaled flees the facility and ends up in Wikström’s restaurant because he is left with no other recourse after being denied asylum. The arrival of Khaled among the ranks of Wikström’s employees facilitates a change for the restaurant. Tired of waiting for customers to wander into the restaurant, Wikström and the others attempt (unsuccessfully) to change the menu and atmosphere in order to drum up business. It is as if both protagonists were waiting for one another to improve each other’s lives.

(Prof. Vera Brunner-Sung (left) and Prof. Johanna Sellman (right) discuss the film with the audience) 

After the film there was a lively Q & A session with Prof. Vera Brunner-Sung (Department of Theatre, the Global Mobility Project) and Prof. Johanna Sellman (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures). One of the audience members remarked that the depiction of white Europeans in the film was mostly positive, with the exception of the militant nationalists and the apathetic bureaucrats of the court system. Prof. Brunner-Sung added to the conversation by asking if the film occupied a gray area between the tropes of the White Savior and White Helper. The Other Side of Hope seems to attempt to subvert the White Savior trope by omitting gratuitous scenes of victimization and by foregrounding Khaled’s self-determination.

The film, though tragic at times, is largely whimsical and funny. The editing, use of compact spaces, and the “cleanliness of the mise en scène,” in the words of Prof. Brunner-Sung, work together to communicate complex emotional aspects of the film to the viewer without language at all. Aki Kaurismäki moves the viewer from a comedy to a tragedy to a melodrama back to a comedy. Ultimately, this conveys instability to the viewer and creates a sense of exhaustion. By highlighting this chaos, Aki Kaurismäki attempts to communicate Khaled’s experience as a migrant seeking asylum.

The film also attempts to address questions about Finland’s “myth of homogeneity,” as pointed out by Prof. Sellman, and the wave of nationalism in Finland and around the globe. The police arrive at the restaurant for a routine inspection and the employees quickly hide Khaled in the bathroom. Instead of finding Khaled and inquiring about his national origins, the police officer asks a Finnish employee to produce his identification because the employee doesn’t “look Finnish” – an ironic moment that speaks to the ways that racism works to undermine the goals of law enforcement.

The film also depicts Finland’s linguistic heterogeneity, as well as the social functions that these languages can serve. The fluidity of language choice captures the negotiation of self that many refugees must go through when seeking asylum.

Indeed, much of this film reflects the reality of migrants’ lives. This is what makes the film grim viewing, in spite of its whimsy. Khaled has been forced to flee from his home in Aleppo, Syria because of violence. He loses contact with his sister because of violence and chaos at the Turkish border. He must secretly travel to Finland in a shipping container full of coal from Gdansk, Poland due to further threats of violence, and finally, it is violence that brings him to Wikström and his subsequent employment. The streak of violence in Khaled’s life does not end when he leaves Syria. Khaled’s experience, crafted brilliantly by Kaurismäki, raises the question: what is the other side of hope?

by Eleanor Paynter, PhD Student, Department of Comparative Studies

La Pirogue (dir. Moussa Touré, 2012), screened by Global Mobility at the Wexner Center for the Arts on March 1, is, in many ways, about a gamble: 31 people sail from Senegal to the Canary Islands in a fishing vessel not meant for the open sea. La Pirogue recounts migration as not only the traversing of physical space, but as an internal journey as well. We learn the different motivations and hopes of nearly each migrant on board and watch as they are threatened by discord and by the sea itself. At the same time, La

Pirogue reminds us of what Douglas Massey and other migration scholars enunciated in the early 1990s: that the movement of a single person across a border always involves a larger network. Although most of this story unfolds within the tight quarters of the pirogue, any attempt to map the narrative would result in a many-threaded web reaching far beyond the boat itself – or Senegal or Spain. Some on board hope to reach relatives in France; once settled, they plan to bring over their spouses and children. They are motivated by stories of musical and athletic stardom, economic success, medical treatment, and employment. The film poignantly loads the Goor Fitt (“man of courage”) with its 31 passengers, rations of rice, a back-up engine, and these narratives.

A stunning screenshot from the film. The solidarity of 31 Africans, fleeing to Spain in a canoe, is tested once they run into trouble.

One of the most striking lines in La Pirogue comes near the beginning of the film, as the wife of protagonist Baye Laye suggests that he not leave Senegal for Spain because “Europe is going through a crisis,” a reference to the 2008 economic crisis and its global effects. It’s compelling to consider the shift of context that has occurred between the making of La Pirogue, in 2012, and of Gianfranco Rosi’s Italian documentary Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) just four years later, shown by the Global Mobility Project in January. Over the last two years, of course, Europe has been said to be undergoing another crisis, one marked by the arrival of more than 1.3 million migrants in 2015 and several hundred thousand since.

Global Mobility Project team member Vera Brunner-Sung and Associate Professor in History Ousman Kobo

At the March 1 viewing, discussion of La Pirogue included comments to contextualize the narrative in light of Senegalese political and economic history, as well to put it in conversation with Fuocoammare. This discussion was led by Vera Brunner-Sung, Global Mobility faculty member and Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre, and Ousman Kobo, Assistant Professor in the History Department and scholar of West African history. Prof. Brunner-Sung drew our attention to the theme of “the losing bet,” introduced in the wrestling match of the first scene. Prof. Kobo suggested that the film is commenting not only on migration, but on religious tensions in Senegal; within the microcosmic society in the boat, passengers argue over rituals and rites involving Muslim prayers or the placement of a talisman.

The pairing of La Pirogue with Fuocoammare provoked conversation about narrative perspectives, and about hope. Rosi’s recent documentary portrays the arrival of asylum seekers to the Italian island of Lampedusa; although it does not focus on individual migrant narratives, it does emphasize their rescue and entrance into EU territory. Touré’s 2012 film instead depicts the intimate narrative of a group of migrants as they prepare for and set out towards Europe on a journey which not all survive.

This pairing and the discussion with Profs. Brunner-Sung and Kodo also reminded those of us in the audience that although Baye Laye’s story is fictional, it is based on the migration of thousands of young men in just such vessels over at least the last decade, and many of these journeys end in tragedy. A note at the end of the film states that at least 5,000 of the 30,000 migrants who attempted this voyage from West Africa prior to the making of this film did not survive. As Prof. Kodo remarked, “This is the reality of our time.”

Viewers left the theater quietly, many of us still taking it in.

Samuele Pucillo in “Fire at Sea,” a documentary by Gianfranco Rosi. Credit

Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and nominated for a 2017 Academy Award for best documentary feature, Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary observes Europe’s migrant crisis from the vantage point of a Mediterranean island where hundreds of thousands of refugees, fleeing war and poverty, have landed in recent decades. Rosi shows the harrowing work of rescue operations but devotes most of the film to the daily rhythms of Lampedusa, seen through the eyes of a doctor who treats casualties and performs autopsies, and a feisty but anxious pre-teen from a family of fishermen for whom it is simply a peripheral fact of life. With its emphasis on the quotidian, the film reclaims an ongoing tragedy from the abstract sensationalism of media headlines. (New York Film Festival copy)