Europa movie review (2022) | Little White Lies

Europa

15 Mar 2022 / Released: 18 Mar 2022

A person with closed eyes and raised hand in a forested area.
A person with closed eyes and raised hand in a forested area.
4

Anticipation.

Depictions of migrant experiences in art are now more urgent than ever.

3

Enjoyment.

Closer to an agonising experience than is an enjoyable watch.

3

In Retrospect.

Portrays unsettling realities to a visceral and succinct effect.

A young Iraqi refugee seeks refuge in Bul­gar­ia in writer/​director Haider Rashid’s heart-stop­ping drama.

In a time where glob­al com­modi­ties, cap­i­tal and peo­ple flow at unprece­dent­ed rates, migra­tion con­demns mil­lions to a life of uncer­tain­ty and dis­pos­abil­i­ty. It’s with a strik­ing­ly min­i­mal amount of dia­logue that Haider Rashid’s Europa poignant­ly evokes how those bear­ing the brunt of state vio­lence enter a phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly soul-destroy­ing state of purgatory.

Adam Ali gives a har­row­ing, phys­i­cal per­for­mance as Kamal, a young Iraqi man attempt­ing to cross the Turk­ish bor­der into Bul­gar­ia. He flees into the dense Bul­gar­i­an For­est and is thrust into a liv­ing night­mare, spend­ing three days and three nights in con­stant motion in order to evade a ruth­less gang of armed vig­i­lante migrant hunters’.

With­in this skil­ful­ly chore­o­graphed, kinet­ic fight-for-sur­vival sto­ry, the air feels heavy with a loom­ing threat, and Kamal’s pain, fear, des­per­a­tion and dis­tress are gut-wrench­ing­ly con­veyed through the claus­tro­pho­bic cam­er­a­work which calls atten­tion to itself.

Sat­u­rat­ing the high­ly immer­sive and eso­teric sound design with his protagonist’s errat­ic breath­ing and anguished cries, Rashid imbues his film with a dis­qui­et­ing sus­pense. Some long takes under­mine that impact as they linger on a point for longer than nec­es­sary, and although the ambigu­ous end­ing may be frus­trat­ing for some, it’s a crys­tal clear, real­is­tic evo­ca­tion of our protagonist’s pre­car­i­ous future.

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