Invisible woman: Europe

MIGRANTS: Philip Scheffner's foray into fiction varies the game of visible and invisible until dreams and reality fuse. Despite its anodyne title Philip Scheffner’s Europe, world-premiering at this year’s Berlinale, is one of the more unusual projects in the Forum section lineup. It refers not to the continent (though perhaps figuratively) but to the bus stop in the small French suburb of Chatellerault that the film’s 30-something protagonist Zohra Hamadi utilizes to get from her small flat, to work (at an NGO-run, second-hand-clothing warehouse), to various medical and physical therapy appointments, and back again. Having left her native Algeria to undergo a series of surgeries to correct a debilitating spinal condition, Zohra is now pain-free and able to walk upright for the very first time. Surrounded by a vast network of family and friends, all of whom live in the same housing block, she now only has to wait for her husband Hocine’s family reunification visa to come through. And then – voila! – her new and improved life can commence. Or not. Most likely not.

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