Migration to Europe is by no means a new phenomenon. Our ancestors migrated across Eurasia from Africa around 1.75 million years ago. During the first millennium B.C.E., widespread migration to Europe laid the ethnic groundwork for the emergence of the modern European nation states. While the Germanic languages recall this period as The Great Migration of Peoples (Die Völkerwanderung; De Grote Volksverhuizing, etc), the Latin language family remembers it as The Barbaric Invasions (Invasioni barbariche; Invasions barbares, etc). If a language is viewed as an archive, it is remarkable how differently European languages represent the same past: people vs barbarians; migration vs invasion… Today, these once-hostile peoples are now united under the idea of Europe in the context of the European Union—though conflict still arises through the problematic, ongoing project of defining who and what exactly gets to be ‘European’.

The Schengen Agreement, which was signed in 1985, increased the mobility in Europe by allowing citizens of 27 member states and their families to travel, reside, and work freely within the Schengen area. While most immigrants in Europe are Europeans, others have origins from outside the continent, arriving from former colonies or as guest labourers, skilled workers, refugees, and asylum seekers in addition to the undocumented. Identities may vary, but the desire for improved living conditions is universal. Mieke Bal coined the term “migratory culture” as she explains that it eliminates the “us vs. them” dichotomy, while making migration a natural phenomenon in which everyone lives and participates (Bal 2022, 3). Furthermore, immigrants give back by making a significant contribution to Europe's economy, society, and growth. Yet, the official branding of Europe gives immigrant populations little emphasis, with media narratives carrying primarily pejorative connotations. As immigration to Europe increased rapidly from 2013, a phenomenon labelled “The European Migrant Crisis,” anti-immigrant sentiment was inflamed. The significant fall in the number of immigrants resulting from the “EU-Turkey deal” enacted in March 2016 has coincided with the rise of far-right movements across Europe. Day by day, while the borders of Europe are being strengthened and fortified against migration, a discourse grows which increasingly places “Europeans” and “immigrants” into a polarised dichotomy. As encounters become hostile and turn the public space we all inhabit into a battleground for domination, the voices of the ascribed “others” are silenced and their stories made absent.

I once heard someone say: “nobody looks at me”, just mumbling to himself. This was a refugee from Syria, walking around in Amsterdam with a facial expression of loss and loneliness. When I heard that statement I knew what I wanted to do for the short film. With the young artist Lena Verhoeff we began to reflect on how to visualize this: the loneliness of the refugee who arrives in a busy place where he doesn’t know anyone, doesn’t understand or speak the language, but worst of all, where he is totally ignored. We decided to reverse the person’s statement by using reflection, mirroring, as the central trope, within which the lonely man almost disappears, drowning in the crowd. In order to avoid the voyeuristic tourist gaze, we made the presentation visual only, without developing a narrative and shunning dialogue. The only elementary narrative potential resides with two bullies, young men who bother the main figure when he is escaping from the house where the woman was trying to seduce him. But this potential narrative kernel is not developed. The general sense of fear is all that remains.

The only bits of text are the beginning and the end, where the story of the mythical “first refugee”, Joseph in Genesis and Yusuf in the Koran, is briefly spoken by a voice-over. The interesting aspect of these fragments is that the two versions are strongly opposed to each other. In Genesis the story is quite ethnocentric and negative, whereas in the Koran it stages feminist empathy, literally presented when the friends of the allegedly nasty woman (Potiphar’s wife) about whose passion for Yusuf they were gossiping, are so impressed by Yusuf’s beauty that they cut themselves with the sharp little knives distributed to peel their desert oranges. This version was taken up by Thomas Mann in his long novel Joseph and his Brothers, from 1933 (transl. John E. Woods). A remarkable choice for a German literary writer living through the beginning of Nazi culture, from which he escaped in 1933.

The film is a kind of lesson in looking, compelling the viewers to keep their eyes on the lone figure, who is not always easy to spot. Also, the reflections in shop windows and mirrors never show the main figure, only reflection as such. Lena Verhoeff’s sharp camera work keeps him visible, but barely. The music, composed by the actor Sly Maceo Sampimon and some others (among whom Lena Verhoeff) adds to the effect of the barely-visible; it is discreet and soft. On the whole, the point of this film is to make its viewers aware of precisely what that Syrian man mumbled: no one looks at me, no one talks to me. We must make the effort of seeing the unseeing.