It’s nighttime and all is silent. Bekes and Alan walk across a dark, empty field near a tall, floodlit fence. They know of a secret way to get to the other side, but whether it’s safer is uncertain.

In KILLING BAGHEERA by Muschirf Shekh Zeyn (part of HFF Special 2) we accompany the two protagonists on the last leg of their journey to the border of Europe. The tension as well as the exhaustion they feel is palpable in every silent second that these men must endure in order to avoid detection.

WE KNEW HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY WERE, THESE ISLANDS by Younès Ben Slimane (Program 8) takes us into the oppressive silence of the Tunisian desert at night. There, a lone gravedigger goes about his work in the darkness, respectfully tending to the remains of those who were searching for a better life but lost their own in the process. Gently he shows the camera the final belongings of the deceased: shoes, dolls, and pacifiers. While paying his final respects, he plants small saplings on the graves, bringing a little new life to this wasteland.

kILLING bAGHEERA

No conozco la historia del fuego

we knew how beautiful they were, these islands

Even a living forest can be a wasteland, though. At least this is the case for the four protagonists in the documentary NO CONOZCO LA HISTORIA DEL FUEGO (Program 9). Without much to say to each other, they, too, spend most of their time in silence. All they have in common is their fate: they came to Spain in search of a better life and are now somehow trying to get by outside of society. The three directors Alberto Ruiz, Luis Morla, and Sara Domínguez López chose their title from an excerpt of a poem by Alejandra Pizarnik: “Yo no sé de pájaros, no conozco la historia del fuego. Pero creo que mi soledad debería tener alas.”, which translates as “I don’t know about birds, nor do I know about the history of fire. But I believe that my solitude should have wings.”

This is the very same loneliness that plagues Vinoth, an asylum-seeker from Sri Lanka who came to Lausanne, Switzerland, a year ago. He tries in vain to befriend co-workers, neighbors, and other Sri Lankans. He’d like to volunteer to help others, to do good. But time and again he is stymied by bureaucracy and spends most evenings alone in his apartment listening to cricket matches on the radio. Yet in DOORSA by Keerthigan Sivakumar (Program 6), there’s also a glimmer of light amid the gloom of loneliness. Energized by the music of his home country, Vinoth spends his birthday on his balcony; in the background, even the neighbor who’d previously turned his back on him starts to move in time with the music.