IVV at the Venice Film Festival: Iranian refugees with their backs to the camera
Everyone knows the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and perhaps it is not without reason that he has sometimes been called the most well-known artist in the field of visual arts.
Now, with his first feature film, he is in the competition section at the 74th Venice International Film Festival, and it seems he will win one of the main prizes.
"Human Flow" is the title of this documentary film, which is dedicated to the topic of immigration and asylum.
IWV has been visiting various refugee camps around the world for a long time, trying to portray their painful situation in every corner of the world.
He has repeatedly waited on the coasts of Italy and Greece for boats that bring refugees to the European continent by sea, and have shaped the most controversial problem in Europe today. The film begins with beautiful images of the Mediterranean Sea and soon gets to the heart of the matter: the human condition of refugees, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, who have fled war. At times, the film stands at a distance and tries to observe the human river that, for example, migrates to the Macedonian border in Greece in search of a safe haven, from where a path may open to reach Germany.
But sometimes he also records their most private moments; including an Iranian girl who, with her back to the camera, talks about herself and her uncertain situation (and the fact that there is no one to guide them) and suddenly bursts into anger (Ivvi himself tries to calm the girl down in this scene).
The second Iranian we see in the film tells the story of fleeing the border and settling in Turkey, and points out that some refugee girls were raped along the way and that because the smugglers had weapons, there was nothing they could do.
Strangely, all the refugees from all countries appeared in front of the camera with ease, but the two Iranians in the film have their backs to the camera and are probably reluctant to appear in front of the camera out of fear of the Iranian government's security forces. This is a bitter reminder that Iranian refugees in refugee camps, in addition to numerous other problems, do not feel safe.
But apart from some special framing (which reflects Ivvi's experiences in the field of visual arts), his perspective is strangely journalistic. The recourse to newspaper and media headlines in various sections to provide information to the viewer is born of such a perspective, as are some scenes - and the film's mid-notes - that become unnecessarily sloganeering; including the scenes concerning the Palestinians.
On the other hand, the presence of Ivy herself in various scenes seems like a superfluous presence that could easily be removed from the film.
But the film's strength is the filmmaker's unflinching exploration of parts of the world that can even be very dangerous, including scenes of the war with ISIS and the conquest of the city, which demonstrate the filmmaker's audacity.
He visits various camps around the world, from Bangladesh to Kenya, which surprisingly has a lesser-known camp and is the largest refugee camp in the world: with five hundred thousand refugees!
The realities that the filmmaker touches upon are very bitter realities that can disturb the viewer's peace; from the simple fact that when the Berlin Wall fell, there were only eleven walls between countries, and in 2016, there were seventy walls (or something like that), to the fact that the population of Africa will double by 2050 without any facilities for them.
The filmmaker also reaches the Mexican-American border and records several people jumping over the wall, where Donald Trump has promised to build a bigger wall.
The last line of the film is a beautifully humorous line from a former Syrian astronaut, "From up there, when I was looking at the Earth, I thought this beautiful planet was for all of us. Of course, this beautiful planet also has bad guys, so why don't we gather them all and send them into space?"
Source: Radio Farda
