Maria Kourkouta

Intermede

Images of a small boatyard, somewhere in Greece. Between the repairs and the boats’ departures, a team of men haul them ashore and set them afloat again. A 16 mm film built around gestures and movements that oscillate between a toing and froing, attachment and detachment, tension and tenderness.

Spectres are Haunting Europe

The Idomeni refugee camp housed people from the Middle East who were trying to cross the border into Europe. When the Greek police closed the camp, the refugees resisted and blocked a railway line used to deliver goods. Maria Kourkouta’s minimalist documentary not only observes these events but also presents carefully modeled static images that open up the space within and without the frame of view, and in the closing black-and-white sequence offers a poetic commentary. The result is a bleak portrait of a place where endless lines of refugees try to preserve the final remnants of their individual freedoms. “This film is a call to welcome the refugees that cross the European borders, as well as the ghosts that return with them.”