03/05/2022 - The second feature-length film for both co-directors Arne Büttner and Ole Jacobs is an intimate documentary and a damning account of Europe's human rights failures

Numerous TV reports and documentaries were made in Europe's largest refugee camp, Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos before it burned down in 2020. But Nasim by German co-directors Arne Büttner and Ole Jacobs, which has just had its international premiere at Hot Docs, stands out thanks to its patient, humanistic approach as well as the fact that it was shot when the fires broke out.

Büttner is also credited as DoP, Jacobs as sound recordist, and both as editors together with Janina Herhofer. Of course, a bigger team would not have been able to catch all of the intimate moments in this story of Nasim, an Afghani refugee from Iran who is in Moria with her husband Shamsullah, young child Alireza and teenage son Mohammed, alongside her extended family, including her mother and sister.

Now 38 years old, Nasim was forced into marriage with her husband when she was just 13. He was a member of the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets, and she only starts to discover parts of his past as they prepare for an asylum interview. Nudged by her outspoken sister, she is shyly considering a divorce and a liberation from a loveless marriage, one of the rare options that Muslim women can take advantage of in their dire situation in Europe.

Shamsullah, proud of his boxing prowess and his ability to deliver a mean massage, does not seem like a bad guy, but we don't get to see much of their one-on-one interaction beyond the preparation for the interview and a minor argument about a cooking pot. He is, probably for the first time, in an inferior position: the fact that Nasim can read and write, and that she sometimes serves as an unofficial replacement for a schoolteacher, gives her the upper hand over the illiterate man in this situation.

Nasim is really at a crossroads here. Alireza hates the boxing classes that his dad has enrolled him in, and Mohammed has started smoking, hangs out with youngsters his family doesn't approve of, and wants to run off to Athens. Nasim suffers from a condition that often renders her hands useless, and an especially poignant scene has Alireza helping her tie her shoelaces. When learning English is mentioned, Nasim says that she can't do so, owing to her “messed-up head”, but there is nothing wrong with her as far as the viewer can detect.

On the contrary: the co-directors have found a woman who is both brave and gentle, curious and shy, with a strong sense of justice but still weighed down by a feeling of responsibility in accordance with patriarchal customs. It is hard not to feel for this protagonist with her seemingly invincible spirit in the toughest of circumstances. And then, a Greek nationalist protest takes place at Moria and the fires soon follow. The film doesn't tell us this, but Google does: four underage Afghani refugees were eventually sentenced to ten years in prison after a trial closed to the media owing to COVID measures.

The fact that the doc was shot during COVID serves to lay bare Europe's disregard for human rights even more. Imagine if the measures were enforced on you while living in such conditions, as opposed to the general population. Combined with Nasim's story, in which the co-directors manage to find true moments of poetry within the hellhole that was Moria, it is a damning account of the continent's shameful record.

Nasim is a co-production between German companies Uebl GbR and Rosenpictures Filmproduktion GbR.