"...A Person Deprived of a Legal Status is Further Denied a Voice and an Image”: Philip Scheffner and Merle Kröger on their Berlinale-Debuting Europe

World-premiering in the Forum section (February 13) at this year’s Berlinale, Philip Scheffner’s Europe is a work at once as simple and complex as its title might imply. “Europe” is the name of a bus stop in Europe (specifically in the small French town of Chatellerault) where the main character Zohra, an Algerian citizen, catches a ride from her housing block flat to her job sorting secondhand clothes at an NGO-run warehouse and also to various doctor and physical therapy appointments – her reason for coming to France in the first place. Fortunately, the numerous surgeries and treatments for her debilitating scoliosis have now paid off as she’s finally able to stand up straight and pain-free. Not so fortunately, as a result of being “healed” Zohra is no longer eligible to stay, her residence permit renewal coldly and bureaucratically denied. And this regardless of her legitimate employment, the many family members who live nearby, and the family reunification visa that she’s been waiting on to bring her husband Hocine over to join her. And then there’s the fact that she doesn’t exist, rendered invisible by the state — and also by the director, who inventively cuts Zohra out of the frame for a large chunk of the film once she loses her right to be recognized. But this is also where abstract metaphor meets harsh reality; Zohra is played by Rhim Ibrir, whose own life story is pretty much identical to that of her character’s. Indeed, what began as documentary ended as a troubling work of “state enforced fiction.” Which is why Filmmaker was particularly keen to catch up with the German director (whose Havarie likewise played the Berlinale Forum in 2016) and his co-writer Merle Kröger to learn all about working within a government-provoked genre they never intended to create.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.