FORM-Idea

By Beverly Andrews | @BeverlyAAndrews

Most stories which concern migration, focus primarily on the often hostile encounters which occur between a country’s residents and those fleeing violence. This is why The Valley, a new documentary directed by Nuno Escudeiro and produced by Andreas Pichler, Valerio B Moser, Luc Martin-Gousset, comes as a pleasant surprise, since it documents very different encounters, those based on trust and mutual understanding. Filmed in the Roya region of the French Alps, The Valley offers a ray of hope at a particularly bleak time.

The Roya region has had its own turbulent history, it was at one point the location for a pivotal battle in World War II, between French resistant fighters and the German army, a battle the resistance ultimately lost. The region then went on to be occupied by German forces. After the war the valley, which had before been leased by Napoleon III to Italy as an official hunting grounds, was overnight decreed to be part of France and the Italian language was subsequently banned.  Residents living in the Roya valley today are therefore the children, grandchildren and in some cases great grandchildren of people who directly experienced forced displacement. The area’s history in many ways helps to explain why residents feel so passionately about helping. With an unprecedented number of migrants arriving daily, many from Africa seeking help and desperately trying to avoid Italy's much more punitive asylum laws, residents are in some cases prepared to risk jail in order to do what they feel they are obligated to do, in order to help. At a time when many politicians around the world, are using immigration as a political weapon, residents here buck the trend and rather than responding with hostility to new arrivals they appear to recognise the fact that we all share a common humanity.

The film opens with a scene showing a local couple, Elisabetta and her husband, teaching French to a young Eritrean family. They hope by doing so they may best be able to help the family better explain their complex asylum case to the local authority. The family are in fact living with the couple, one of many who this couple have housed over the past few years. The couple speak movingly about the reasons why they have decided to open their home to strangers stating that they feel it is their responsibility to help new arrivals navigate the often bewildering and unnecessarily complex asylum laws, laws which of course are constantly changing. French immigration officials often cynically exploit a refugee’s ignorance of these laws as well as their limited knowledge of the French language and use this as a reason for rejecting their asylum applications. These officials know that one wrong word during an asylum hearing, can mean the difference between a successful claim and an individual or in some cases an entire family, being sent back to the very country they were desperately trying to escape.

The residents of the Roya valley have gone to great lengths to find ways to help, even forming a residents’ committee, so those living there can support each other. But in this community, one man is particular stands out and that man is Cedric, an individual who sees helping those in need as his sole mission in life. Over the last few years literally hundreds of individuals and families have lived in his home and a shot of him leading a group of what appears to be fifty migrants, down a mountain side to a place where he feels confident that they will be safe to make their asylum claims is very moving. It paints such a contrast to the news reports we now see daily of global populist leaders appearing to encourage violence against immigrant communities.

Cedric

In this lovely documentary we are also introduced to the migrants themselves who tell heart-breaking stories of the traumas they have faced. One man in particular recounts the story of his long torturous journey to France, a journey during which he saw friends literally killed in front of him, he states though that a life devoid of hope is itself not a life.

Over the course of the film we find out that both Cedric and Elisabetta are awaiting sentencing for aiding migrants, along with several other residents. But although we never discover the outcome of their cases, both vow to carry on regardless. Ultimately The Valley is a welcome reminder that at a time of global darkness there can also be a tiny ray of light.

The Valley is currently playing at international festivals around the world and is also available periodically on the Mubi streaming service.

form-idea.com London, 4th March 2020.