|
Documentary highlights European immigrants' plight
2007-01-25
The harrowing ordeal of young immigrants who set out looking for a dream in Europe but ultimately find themselves trapped in a nightmare is the focus of a powerful documentary being screened at the Sundance Film Festival here. "Welcome Europa," from director Bruno Ulmer, traces the journey of eight young Kurdish, Moroccan and Romanian immigrants. Leaving home because of poverty or political oppression, they seek paradise in Paris, Amsterdam or Madrid but instead get sucked into a seedy underworld of prostitution, drugs and crime. Ulmer said the biggest challenge he faced was winning the trust of his male subjects, many of whom felt a devastating sense of shame at having had to work as prostitutes. "They were ashamed to talk. It's not a macho thing to say that you have to sell sex to men to survive," Ulmer told AFP. "This is something you don't talk about." The band of boys and young men Ulmer followed for a year set out hoping to earn money to support their families, but one by one their hopes wither as the hardships of life as an illegal immigrant take their toll. Ulmer says the film is a study of people whose cultural identity is stripped away by succumbing to the temptation of the "easy money" available from prostitution. "One 17-year-old said he was not going to work on a farm for 30 euros a day when he could make that money in half an hour selling sex," Ulmer said. "That same night, he was crying like a baby and saying, 'If my wife knew what I did... I'm just so ashamed.'" "Becoming illegal migrants, they actually have to face a reality where the qualities of the men -- to be the provider, protector, I'm tough, whatever -- all that disappears. "So that's why you have this kind of complete loss of a sense of who they are, because everything that makes them a man in traditional culture is annihilated by their experience," said Ulmer. Ulmer spent a year getting to know the hangouts of the youngsters and earning their trust before starting his project. "Slowly I gained their confidence. First I had to convince them I was not a police officer or a potential client looking for sex. "Once trust was established, I told them I was a filmmaker and I was trying to do a movie about them and with them," said Ulmer. "These are wealthy Western European countries that they want to go, that is their El Dorado. France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium -- these are the countries they are going to," said Ulmer. Of the group featured in Ulmer's film, two have managed to get papers allowing them to enter the country. The others have been deported or jailed.
| 
