We all know the situation, as people living in relative peace and comfort, to be confronted with suffering and needs from those in front of us—people evidently in bad shape asking for money, food, or any other kind of help. We know our general self-defence against acting: there are institutions we pay taxes for that can handle these problems by offering food, clothes, and even a sleeping place. But what happens when one day somebody knocks at our door asking not only for help but for survival? You know refusing his request would mean sending him to death.
This is the initial situation of Zvika Gregory Portnoy’s and Zuzanna Solakiewicz’s documentary The Guest, presented at #IDFA 2024. The perversity of this situation is caused by the political strategies of #Belarus and #Russia to invite #refugees to be transported to the Belarusian-Polish border to enter the #European Union# to amplify internal social tension and conflict. The EU, in this case, represented by Poland, reacts again, refusing all #human rights# by building a hermetic 3km long wall to push back #migrants and refugees, while Belarus rejects their return by the threat of death. Consequently, hundreds of these lost people, often utterly disoriented about the political situation, try to survive without food, water and sufficient clothes in the ZONE, knowing their death is only days away, among them women and children.
The ZONE
In this zone, where only inhabitants and armed forces are allowed to stay, the exhausted Syrian refugee, 27-year-old Alhyder, knocked at Maciek and his family’s door, having the good fortune not to be reported immediately. Maliek is a quiet and sensible man, deeply inspired by humanitarian values and aware of the political atrocities, including his own country. The communication between the family and Alhyder is limited to very poor English. Alhyder understands that Maciek has not told him everything he knows because he is afraid and worried about him and is looking in vain for a solution. Limited communication can cause trouble for insurance and fear about the possible reaction of the other side.
Remarkably, Alhyder does not present himself just as a helpless victim but as somebody who needs to take responsibility, also including those who are criminalised by Polish law just for helping persons like him to survive. Both men understand there is no real solution in sight. As Alhydeer wants to liberate him, saying he isn’t really inside the refugee’s problem, Maciek simply answered: «We all are inside the problem as human beings.»
Both men understand there is no real solution in sight.
Claustrophobia
The camera perfectly captures the claustrophobic situation of their being closed off and up. Their facial expressions are recorded highly sensitively to convey their hidden feelings. Looking outside the house means facing the patrolling military and police. This year’s Best Cinematography award from IDFA rightfully compensates for this subtle work.
While local political propaganda uses fake messages, like about a woman who got raped because she stopped her car to help a refugee, the camera itself accomplished the members of humanitarian aid organisations into the marshy forest to find the survivors’ traces or their bodies, sometimes still alive. They can only leave water and food bags on the ground; if they meet people, they can also offer hot tea and medicines. Those who don’t appreciate their assisting work can even damage their cars.
Undermining EU law
Co-directors Zvika Gregory Portnoy’s and Zuzanna Solakiewicz’s film integrates the utopia of a human society without frontiers, expressed in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony’s «Freude schöner Götterfunke,» while the camera shows the deadly Polish fence in the background. The film ends with Alhyder’s still hopeful sentence that he will find a solution.
The Guest is another key work about the perversion and undermining of European international and humanitarian law. This documentary completes the already-known picture of the EU as a criminal institution collaborating with #torture in #Libya and causing the death of thousands of people drowning in the #Mediterranean or dying elsewhere in the cold.
