{"id":6582,"date":"2022-01-15T00:02:56","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T22:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=6582"},"modified":"2022-12-17T11:04:25","modified_gmt":"2022-12-17T09:04:25","slug":"europa-iraqs-entry-in-the-94th-annual-oscars-frames-epic-refugee-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/europa-iraqs-entry-in-the-94th-annual-oscars-frames-epic-refugee-struggle\/","title":{"rendered":"“Europa,” Iraq’s Entry in the 94th annual Oscars, Frames Epic Refugee Struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Outtake from director Haider Rashid’s Europa<\/em>, Iraq’s Oscar entry for the 94th annual awards competition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thomas Dallal<\/h4>\n

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Iraqi-Italian director Haider Rashid\u2019s riveting Europa<\/em> (2021) starkly portrays a small, but deeply scorching, fragment of the brutal reality and cruel human tragedy endured by countless refugees and asylum seekers seeking to enter Europe. In a microcosm set at and around the Turkey-Bulgaria frontier, lead character Kamal\u2019s epic migratory struggle encapsulates the duress that millions like him have faced, and continue to face, after fleeing homes and countries during armed conflict and myriad other calamities. Accomplished 35-year-old Rashid\u2019s latest film, his fifth feature, presents a compelling ode to millions that seek safer haven in faraway-from-home, unfamiliar and frequently hostile places, including Europe.<\/p>\n

Europa<\/em> centers around its young lead character Kamal, a hunted Iraqi asylum-seeker who breaches the Turkey-Bulgaria border. Kamal exudes a tormented, frenetic adrenalin reminiscent of Ali La Pointe, revolutionary fighter and protagonist in Gillo Pontecorvo\u2019s equally riveting Battle for Algiers<\/em>, albeit not with Algiers<\/em>\u2019 colonial liberation narrative. Europa<\/em> nevertheless, and similarly, delivers epic, documentary-style dramatic historical fiction and does so powerfully, aligning in a fashion with Algiers<\/em>\u2019 esteemed genre. To categorize Europa<\/em> as a thriller or a horror film, as some critics have, is to miss the point and suggests that reputed film cognoscenti, as if on cue, continue to miss the proverbial forest for the trees. As director Rashid himself pointedly describes the film\u2019s vision:<\/p>\n

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The goal was to portray what is a tough, inhumane experience in the most realistic and visceral way possible; breathing, living, and fighting with a resilient but nonetheless suffering character who, with his small, almost minuscule story, represents the struggles of many.<\/p>\n

While the film focuses strongly on realism and an intimate approach to the character, immersing the audience with a sense of presence, to me it holds a deeply symbolic nature as well: being an immigrant or a descendent of immigrants in Europe today, can often feel a lot like being lost in a wild forest, where friends are few and foes are many.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rashid, son of an Italian mother and an Iraqi journalist, director and exile who fled Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq for Europe in the late 1970s, grew up in Italy with significant exposure to film and the film business. Acting in one his father\u2019s films before he was ten, Rashid spent his teenage summers \u201cfollowing my father around film festivals and cultural events.\u201d He later became his father\u2019s camera operator and filmed interviews his father made for television outlets all over the world, which piqued his interest and prompted his first screenwriting efforts. Rashid dropped out of film school shortly after starting in London, then, at 23, made his first film \u201cTangled Up in Blue\u201d, about the son of a renowned Iraqi writer coping with his estranged father\u2019s death in Baghdad. Evidently, Rashid never looked back and many more films have followed. This deep film experience, from the time of Rashid\u2019s youth, bore bountiful filmic fruit in Europa<\/em>.<\/p>\n