Here – A gor­geous study of frag­ile human bonds

There’s a sense of har­mo­ny between nat­ur­al and urban land­scapes in Here, Flem­ish direc­tor Bas Devos’ fourth fea­ture which won the Encoun­ters Award and the FIPRESCI prize at the Berli­nale in 2023. The open­ing takes its time: the first lin­ger­ing image is of a tow­er block under con­struc­tion, framed by a gap in some trees. We move clos­er to find a group of builders in the skele­ton of the build­ing. Their faces are hid­den, their voic­es are dis­tant, and a lone fig­ure in hi-vis and hard hat con­tem­plates the view; a moment of peace amidst the indus­tri­al clanging.

Here is, unsur­pris­ing­ly, very much about a spe­cif­ic place (Brus­sels). But it’s also root­ed in a sense of what it tru­ly means to be present, and of find­ing con­nec­tion when you your­self feel root­less, espe­cial­ly as an immi­grant. Shot on 16mm, the film is rich with the ver­dant green of hedgerows that grow out of dis­used rail­way tracks and the gold­en glow of sun­rise and sun­set, mak­ing the mun­dane lumi­nous and even the small­est weed a mir­a­cle of nature. The cam­era rarely moves and there is vir­tu­al­ly no score, invit­ing the view­er to see the world through the eyes of the film’s con­tem­pla­tive protagonists.

Soli­tary Roman­ian con­struc­tion work­er Ste­fan (Ste­fan Gota) has a kind of tran­si­to­ry exis­tence — he lives alone in a tow­er block exact­ly like the ones he helps build and as an insom­ni­ac he wan­ders the desert­ed city at night. He’s con­sid­er­ing mov­ing back to Roma­nia for good, and emp­ties his fridge by mak­ing batch­es of veg­etable soup he gives out to his friends and acquain­tances. Played with an under­stat­ed warmth by Gota, he seems attuned to the won­der of every­day life, watch­ing trains pull into the sta­tion at dawn, or cradling some seeds he finds in his pocket.

We then meet anoth­er inde­pen­dent soul, Bel­gian-Chi­nese botanist Shux­iu (beau­ti­ful­ly played by Liyo Gong, a non- pro­fes­sion­al actor), who is study­ing moss. She too has trou­ble sleep­ing: in Chi­nese she describes wak­ing from a dream and being unable to recall the words for any of the objects in her room, an expe­ri­ence that is fright­en­ing but also makes her feel a sense of one­ness with the world around her. The pair meet by chance and their shared sense of Oth­er­ness, both as immi­grants but also as peo­ple with a sense of awe for what is often over­looked, binds them together.

At only 84 min­utes and light on plot, at times this film feels so slight that it might just slip through your fin­gers. And yet its ethe­re­al­i­ty is what makes it enchant­i­ng. Devos blurs the bound­aries between dreams and real­i­ty, jux­ta­pos­ing moments of mag­ic real­ism with mere­ly the kind of awe you can expe­ri­ence in every­day life if you give your­self the time to look. And though the two leads actu­al­ly have pre­cious lit­tle screen time togeth­er, when they do meet it feels qui­et­ly momen­tous, both as if their time on earth has led up to this, but also that it’s just anoth­er day.