Lost Whispers in the Distance

⏱60 minutes|🎬Documentary|🚩Iran|🖺 Documentary|🎞Color

A film by Mansour Forouzesh
Producer: Mansour Forouzesh
Co-producer: Seyed Mahdi Dezfuli

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Logline: A group of Iranian and Afghan refugees living in a Serbian refugee camp talk about their dreams and visions for life in Europe.

Synopsis: A group of Iranian and Afghan refugees are living in camps in Serbia and discussing their aspirations and perceptions about Europe as a dreamland. Meanwhile, a group of Kurdish families is attempting to cross the European border illegally.

The refugees decide to cross the border independently due to the exorbitant demands of professional smugglers and refer to this quest as “the GAME.”

As we follow the life stories of Houshang, Masoumeh, Baluch, Kamran, and a group of Afghan refugees, Muzaffar and Jafar decide to cross the Serbian-Croatian border into Europe. They embark on this journey in wintry and snowy weather…

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

The aim of the film is to show the mindset and aspirations of people regarding migration to the West, and to portray how Iranians view it as an opportunity to fulfill their lust for a luxurious life, whereas for Afghans, it is a question of survival. The film unveils the truth about the hardships of the journey of migration and the transition from inhabitant to refugee. Although many filmmakers have attempted to demonstrate the suffering of refugees in various parts of the world, they often miss small details and fail to convey the impact of migration on people.

In this documentary, we have endeavored to elucidate the plight of refugees and to showcase previously unseen perspectives.

OUR STORY

The European refugee crisis started in 2015 due to the high number of Middle Eastern and African asylum seekers arriving in the European Union across the Mediterranean Sea. Countries with a huge flow of irregular migrants include Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Somalia. These people are escaping civil war, human rights violations or economic hardship, hoping to find a better life in European countries. However, in the last two years, Iranian asylum seekers have become a

new phenomenon in Europe, as their case is very different from their counterparts. There is no war in Iran like in Syria or Afghanistan, no famine like in Somalia, Sudan or Yemen, and no huge economic crisis like in Venezuela.

After lifting the visa requirement for Iranians by the Serbian government in 2017, many of them traveled to Serbia without going back to the country and requested asylum. Two important questions have been raised regarding this situation:

What is the main motivation of Iranian asylum seekers to come to European countries? And what is their perception about the host societies?

This documentary aims to answer these questions and to show the plight of Iranian refugees and asylum seekers in Serbia, who left their country for a better future but failed to cross the European borders and ended up in a small refugee camp in Sid, Serbia.

IN MEDIA

“Like many Western-made films about refugees, Forouzesh’s documentary looks at what makes someone flee their home in search of an imagined utopia. But Lost Whispers in the Distance, which is mostly in Persian with English subtitles, also warns of the risks of life as a refugee. “