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Little Alien

Little Alien is a documentary film about unaccompanied minor refugees. The film is directed by the Austrian director and film producer Nina Kusturica. 

Synopsis

The film’s protagonists are teenagers coming from crisis regions all over the world. They are leaving their countries and fleeing to Europe, on their own and at great risk. 

Nina Kusturica provides a complex picture of their hopes and dreams, as they are facing a partially absurd and inhuman bureaucratic system by the European States after their escape. The teenagers Juma, Hishame, Ahmed, Nura, Achmad, Asha, Jawid and Alem enable the audience to comprehend why leaving their homes and families and setting off for an uncertain future seemed like the only way out for them. In addition, the director provides the audience with a glimpse behind the scenes of border control, by means of thermographic cameras used by policemen on oblivious refugees. She follows the teenagers to their department appointments at the Foreigners Registration Office. 

Having arrived in Europe, the teenagers wish for nothing more than to finally live a regular life. The dehumanized bureaucracy stands in the way of their immediate integration though. Even language courses can only be attended once the teenagers’ request for asylum has been granted. Therefore they are compelled to waiting and inaction. Establishing contact with locals is nearly impossible. A key scene is an encounter at the train station between Nura and Asha, who have just recently arrived in Austria’s Traiskirchen, and a drunken man, who is hurling all sorts of common xenophobic insults at them. The scene is crucial as it must be explained to the girls that something like xenophobia exists in the first place. Bearing that in mind, it’s even more striking and refreshing that all these teenagers are still laughing, as is proper for their age, having fun and staying optimistic, despite the constant uncertainty in their lives. Nina Kusturica succeeded in portraying the protagonists on a very personal level, which makes the movie relevant at all times, as the subject matter of immigration is dealt with by politics in a largely populist way. 

Reception

Nina Kusturica has made a gripping and simple film about young refugees. “A few days ago four policemen beat me up. It still hurts here,” says a dark-eyed boy who’s not more than 13 years old, and points at his back. He seems to be talking about an action film that had little effect on him. He has already experienced too much to let new horrors get under his skin. The other boys sitting in a circle nod, all of them have similar stories to tell. An evening chat over coffee at Patras harbor, in Greece, the European Union. What Nina Kusturica says in her documentary “Little Alien” would be hard to believe if not for the descriptions in numerous reports from refugee organizations and the UN’s Refugee Agency: Violations of human rights are routine on the edges of Fortress Europe. Kusturica juxtaposes abstract concepts and personal stories of individuals: children sitting around a campfire of burning garbage, drinking coffee with stray cats in half-demolished buildings, planning to cross the Mediterranean to the heart of Europe, and talking on a pay phone to dad in Afghanistan, promising him that everything will be fine. Despite the complexity of this theme, it’s made tangible by Kusturica’s approach: She spent a great deal of time gaining the protagonists’ trust. This makes the scenes that are almost uncomfortably intimate more tangible and direct. Highly recommended. 

der Standard, Maria Sterkl

There are no conventional interviews, the viewer becomes an observer. The camera’s always present, during police questioning and conversations with counselors, while the girls are picking out clothes at a charity shop, and during personal phone conversations. The things these young people have experienced, their personal stories of fleeing, the beatings, the loneliness, the humiliation: All this is solely hinted at, sometimes in the jokes they make among themselves. At times the viewer receives only an intimation of these personal tragedies. Thumbnail sketches of fear. What remains unsaid is truly shocking. When the protagonists suddenly stop talking, in the middle of a sentence, when they can’t find the right words to describe something. A silence louder than any words. This powerful film’s message is equally simple and momentous: Behind every statistic about foreigners is a human being, and behind every number in the system is an individual’s fate. 

Oberösterreichische Nachrichten 

Nina Kusturica’s Powerful Documentary “Little Alien” At her age most young people are finishing high school, getting job training, having their first relationship, and going out with friends. The protagonists in Nina Kusturica’s documentary “Little Alien” want to do the same things, but their first life experiences are quite different. They’re familiar with the roads and harbors of Spain, Greece and Morocco, places other aliens with documents and money would never visit. They know how to disappear and survive without anyone’s help, though they aren’t tough and coola report on the lives of aliens at Europe’s borders, in the middle of Vienna, Linz and Traiskirchen. 

Vorarlberger Nachrichten

“Little Alien” is not only touching, it also provides food for thought. The portrayal of these young people on their journeys is horrifying, and at the same time, the other side is shown, in the form of high-tech border surveillance equipment. The film’s set in the middle of Austria, in Vienna, Traiskirchen and Linz. It’s surprising how the director was able to package her images without making any accusations or lecturing. The young people themselves are the focus. Kusturica consciously gives them freedom so that happy and emotional moments can develop. She shows teenagers in love who’re enjoying their youth despite problems with the authorities and red tape. In an interview with Corinna Milborn the director explained that her intention was to show that young refugees are no different than other teenagers. And so, the film’s protagonists dance happily and play in the snow. Nina Kusturica, once a refugee herself, is familiar with the difficulties her protagonists are confronted with. At the same time however she repeatedly points out that not every refugee’s journey and not every asylum application fits a particular pattern. This is also a reminder that individuals and their well-being should be the most important thing, not the law. What remains is the question of what could be wrong with this system.“Little Alien” deals sensitively with a number of related themes involving the authorities’ failures, the difficulties experienced by asylum seekers and the problems relating to borders. A film that reflects intelligently. 

chilli.cc, Alexandra Toth

Nina Kusturica, the Austrian director of “Little Alien,” has made a straightforward film which is reflective to an extremely intelligent degree. She accompanied young people over more than a year, watching them with a sensitive eye for minor matters on their journey into an uncertain future. This is a matter of personal concern, a statement that the director and her team made again after the premiere: When taking the stage for a discussion with the audience, they wore life preservers in solidarity with the many refugees who drown every year on their dangerous journeys toward a better life. 

Köksal Baltaci, Tiroler Tageszeitung

Without reconstructing individual stories of personal suffering, Kusturica successfully highlights a number of traumatic experiences: a gunshot wound that continues to cause headaches, the sea journey to Lampedusa, the innumerable beatings and mistreatment at the hands of police officers and soldiers. Kusturica does not juxtapose the government officials, such as at the Federal Asylum Office, who make the decisions and the young people, with the former as faceless anonymous forces; she sketches a precise portrait of the institutional process and the dynamic involved, and even the helpers, organizations and interpreters are part of one and the same system. “If I had stayed in Afghanistan, they would have shot me and then I’d have peace,” says one of the refugees. “Tell them that here and they’ll shoot you too,” replies another tersely.

Michael Pekler, Der Standard

They are familiar with the streets and harbors of Spain, Greece and Morocco that another kind of alien, one with money and documents, would not normally see. They know how to disappear and get by without help, though they never seem tough or cool. The documentary’s locations are “Europe’s borders” in the middle of Vienna, Linz and Traiskirchen. These are oppressive images, without commentary, in which young people are shown living in parks and condemned buildings. At the borders the police apparently act in a gray area and, according to what the refugees say, they tend to be fast with clubs and their fists. Nina Kusturica has made a powerful film that is certainly worth seeing.

Pascal Honisch, Kurier

Little Alien