Kaveh Bakhtiari descends into the hell of the illegal refugee from Iran. In an apartment in Athens, he films the everyday life of a group of men and one woman. One of them is Bakhtiari’s cousin, who makes it possible to record this invisible Europe. For thousands of euros each, they were brought to Greece by smugglers and left to their fate. What follows is poverty, hopelessness and a continual fear of being arrested. And they have to wait for a stolen passport from someone they look like so that they can move on into Europe. That can takes weeks or months. And maybe it will never come.
Bakhtiari records how the tensions grow within the group and the lethal risks the inhabitants take for a chance to have a humane life. The cruel paradox is that they seem to have to lose all their humanity first, occasionally with fatal consequences. Stop-Over will leave few people unmoved.
Film details
- Countries of production
- France, Switzerland
- Year
- 2013
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2014
- Length
- 100"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
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