Film ‘Les Survivants’: Migration as a mourning and physical experienc

The national premiere of the French feature film ‘Les Survivants’ (The Survivors) took place at the Francofilm Festival 2024, in Rome. The movie is the first work of the 33-year-old movie director Guillaume Renusson, who won the XXI edition of the Riff- Rome’s Independent Film Festival. The movie has the patronage of Amnesty International in partnership with the NGO Emergency and Open Arms.

The film tells the story of Samuel, a widower living in the Italian Alps, and Chehreh, a young teacher who fled Afghanistan following the Taliban’s rise to power. She is en route to Briançon, hoping to reunite with her husband, Ali, whom she was separated from upon their arrival in Greece. One night, amidst a snowstorm, Chehreh seeks refuge in Samuel’s home. Reluctant at first, Samuel decides to help her. Together, they confront not only the harsh elements of nature but also the opposition of locals opposed to Chehreh’s attempt to cross the border to France.

“Briançon is at the border between France and Italy, it was a place that used to shelter all migrants until the funding was cut, and a grassroots solidarity movement was created,” Renusson told ANSA.

“When I am asked who are the survivors I talk about in the movie, I reply that in addition to the main characters, solidarity is the protagonist. Many people are willing to lend a hand, even hosting persons in need in their homes. For many people living in the mountains, there is the same code that applies to sailors: you don’t abandon someone who is not well or in danger, people must be saved,” he added.

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‘Migration is an experience that involves both mourning and the body’

Renusson has directed four short films, and has a direct experience in solidarity.

“I took care of a family from Angola for a year, overseeing bureaucratic and administrative aspects, as well as educational support for the children who had lost their father during the migration journey. Years later, another key experience was the cooperation with another association where I was supporting refugees to realize a series of short films together with them recounting their stories.”

These important life experiences taught the young movie director two important lessons: “Firstly, the experience of migrating, leaving their own country, home, job, relationships, and families from one day to the other, is similar to what you go through when you lose someone and experience mourning. The steps are always the same: rage, denial, acceptance.

Secondly, through the stories I learned that the migration experience is also a physical one: there is effort involved, walking, crossing borders, running, being stopped and stripped naked, captured, sent back, or blocked. The idea of mourning and migration as well as the corporal experience were key, and the movie features the issues of being captured and chased specifically to deliver to the audience the idea of movement,” he underscored.

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The movie was filmed near where the migration drama takes place

Renusson is co-author of the movie script. “But when I started to write it we were living in the comfort of our own homes, it was very different to be at 3,000 meters of altitude, in the freezing cold, with the snow up to our shins”.

The movie director spoke about the logistic difficulties caused by the cold temperatures, and the awareness of telling a story that was happening for real only 40 kilometers away from the filming location.

Before showing the movie, Renusson also engaged with the border police: “Some of them told me they had removed the soles out of a migrant’s shoes to prevent him from continuing his journey, but there was also an agent who said he found two teenagers in the hood of a car- and as only he had seen them- decided to look the other way and let them pass the border. These exchanges made me realize that the situation is more complex and human compared to a polarized world full of tensions which we are experiencing now,” he commented.

He explained that his aim is “to recount what happens to people if they feel abandoned by authorities and decide that it is their right to seek justice on their own, resorting to weapons. As we are all citizens, I am interested in understanding the limits of violence, and look at the point when we stop using words and dialogue. In the movie some characters find themselves in the middle of nowhere with their weapons: how far will they go, what will they do?”

Talking about the character of Samuel, the director explains that he tried to stay away from cliches: “Had he been a history professor in High School I would have fallen in the trap of a left-leaning well-informed man, who reads certain newspapers and helps the migrant. On the other hand, had I painted the character as a racist, xenophobic man who is closed in his little world I would have fallen into the cliché of the meeting with a pretty migrant woman who redeems him,” highlighted Ranussen, concluding that his aim is the universal identification in the story of the movie.

The French movie will be featured at Italian movie theaters from March 21.

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