Samer Muscati, a researcher with Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa division, introduces tonight’s film, Welcome, writer-director Philippe Lioret’s dramatic chronicle of intersecting lives.
Set in Calais, Welcome stars Vincent Lindon as Simon, a local swimming instructor privately reeling in turmoil because he dreads an imminent divorce from his wife (Audrey Dana). Soon, his path unexpectedly crisscrosses with that of Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee with two aspirations: swim the English Channel, and join his girlfriend in England. The film has touched a nerve in France and resulted in an unexpected slam from Immigration Minister Eric Besson.

Guest Samer Muscati is a documentary photographer, lawyer and former journalist who has worked in Rwanda, Iraq and East Timor in the fields of human rights and development. His photographs have been published in Time Magazine and other publications in North America and Europe. Samer contributed to The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence (Douglas & MacIntyre publishers).

Welcome screens at 7 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario. For more information or to order tickets, please call the TIFFG Box Office at 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets can also be purchased online at tiff.net/cinematheque and will be available at the theatre.

His journey is stopped short on the shores of Calais, France, but his determination to reach his girlfriend across the channel is fierce. Treated as an outsider by his fellow refugees, he is befriended by swimming instructor Simon (Vincent Lindon), a man who has chosen his isolation, but warms to Bilal’s passion to reach his true love.

We enter the world of refugees caught between worlds, trapped in a place where they are living in fear, and those who risk helping them face retribution.

Ayverdi’s performance is an impressive debut, conveying a combination of desperation and hope that a future holds promises that will erase the abuses of his past. Although the film centres on the friendship that grows between Bilal and Simon, it is clear that their situation is not an isolated case. Bilal is one of thousands traversing Europe under cover and by any means necessary, while authorities hunt down refugees who have avoided the bureaucratic and seemingly impossible processes that would allow them safe passage.

Welcome highlights one of the perils of globalization — that migration of the persecuted can result in continuing the suffering that they sought to escape.

Program Notes by Alex Rogalski