In Competition - In This World
- Michael Winterbottom's new film: "Young Jamal's desperate journey from Peshawar to London" screened in competition
Watch the video of the interview
On the eve of what is looking increasingly like a new war with Iraq, In this world by British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom opened the official competition at the Berlin Film Festival. This poignant film left the audience literally speechless.
In This World is the story of an incredible odyssey of a group of Afghanis, from Peshawar in Pakistan, where one million sought refuge from the American bombing of Kabul in 2001, to London.
Michael Winterbottom is not new to this genre, having described the Bosnian conflict in Welcome to Sarajevo. In This World could almost be a documentary about the seemingly endless journey undertaken by a fourteen-year-old Afghani called Jamal and his cousin Enayat, who decide that a better life away from the dread and destruction of everyday life in Afghanistan is possible, and to be found in London.
“The story of this film begins with the ending,” Winterbottom tells us. “We read an article about these refugees in a magazine, and after meeting Jamal in London, decided to go to Peshawar to make a documentary. Once there, all we did was ask the people to relive their experiences for us”.
The line that separates fiction from fact is a very fine one in this story that Winterbottom shot with a little digital camera but the impact of this film is huge: it is a body blow. We see Jamal’s younger brother saying goodbye; the mysterious guides that lead Jamal through Iran. We are by his side as he crosses the border with Turkey and share his fear and trepidation as he arrives in the port of Trieste, hidden in a container, and surrounded by corpses of his unfortunate fellow travellers. Unforgettable images. The abject brutality of the scenes of desperation and loss of dignity, the solidarity that comes forth in the face of immense suffering and the total lack of mercy and humanity in this international trade of human beings emerge without the slightest trace of rhetoric. We come out of this film with a heightened awareness of the world’s all-too-comfortable indifference. A great start to a festival whose motto is “towards tolerance”.
(Translated from Italian)
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