A black flock of birds look like streaks of coal drawn on the grey sky. Bare branches raise their fingers; the meadows are covered with frost. Nature is the scene of a human drama that could definitely be avoided, because it marks an artificial border: the one between Hungary and Serbia, the external EU border. Refugees from Africa and Asia try to cross it every day. No one knows how many of them make it. It’s winter now and nature is a hostile territory. A Serbian priest tries to find the refugees. He helps with clothes and food, which is a punishable offence. Volunteer border guards who co-operate with the police are patrolling the other side. They, too, are trying to find people while they talk about how the borders used to be safer.
The priest and the civilian patrols have one thing in common: they act out of conviction, not because they have to. The film looks at those border activities from two perspectives and exposes the fault line that runs between them. We peer through bushes at inhospitable hiding holes with the priest, through binoculars and thermal cameras at small running dots with the border guards. “Those people know no obstacles”, says one of the guards. Meanwhile, the ones he talks about are struggling against freezing to death. National borders are also boundaries of communication.
Lars Meyer