سفر -Safar

By Kyra Sacks, Natascha Erfanipour and Alexander Barquero

Safar ('Journey’ in Dari) is a short ethnographic film made during the Summer School “Visual Ethnography of Cityscapes 2019”, produced by the Dutch Institute in Athens and Athens Ethnographic Film Festival (ETHNOFEST) in collaboration with the University of Leiden, University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.  

Special thanks to Mattijs van der Port, Silas Michalakas, Mark Westmoreland and Tryfon Bampilis.  

Screening dates:
- Anthroscreeningroom, University of Amsterdam, October 24, 2019, 17.00H.
- ETHNOFEST, Athens, 10th edition 27-11 / 4-12 2019.
- Ethnographic Filmday, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 15 december 2019

Safar [Journey] paints a portrait of the regional train that connects the refugee camp of Malakasa to Athens, in Greece. Many of the approximately 1800 migrants and refugees that temporarily reside in the camp depend on the train for their daily chores and needs. In Safar, this commute to the city creates the scenery in which stories, feelings and experiences unfold, while giving a sense of the continuous transition in which the refugees live. At the same time, the daily journey forms one of the few moments of interaction with Greek society, making the train both a physical and symbolical space through which a congested subject is approached: the next stage of the European refugee crisis in Greece. The film is a mosaic that carries the viewers in the train and offers them insights of the travellers’ lives, who after crossing mountains and seas find themselves going back and forth between Malakasa and Athens, between their memories and dreams, between their fears and hopes.

In collaboration with the International Organization of Migration (IOM) field-team in Malakasa and Solidarity Now’s Female Friendly Space and staff I was able to screen the film in the camp and facilitate additional group discussions with teenage girls and women around the topics put forward in the film, such as discrimination, integration and the need for mobility and connection.

Visual research for Safar, stills, 2019