Feature Documentary
TOTAL BUDGET
US $185,996
CONFIRMED FINANCING
US $135.000
When a troupe of clowns arrive to the Greek island of Lesvos to welcome the incoming refugees, they find themselves greeted with closed gates.. Cynthia, the clown Sabine’s sister, joins them on their journey, which slowly becomes a reflection of their own tale of displacement during the Lebanese civil war.
In February 2016, a group of clowns travel to the Greek island of Lesvos on a mission to bring laughter to the transient waves of people escaping war.
Unwittingly, they instead bear witness to the effects of new policies enacted by the European Union, which aim to restrict the refugee influx and with it the intended efforts of individual volunteers. Cynthia, being the narrator and the sister of one of the clowns Sabine, she questions the implied limits of one’s will to help. Why are the clowns not allowed to enter the camps and greet refugees on the shore? Why aren’t they allowed to bring some lightness into the heavy hearts of the displaced? Through an intimate conversation between Cynthia and Sabine, both sisters revisit their own memories of displacement during the Lebanese Civil war: different times; the same waves of terror, the same bitter taste of war.
In October 2015, my sister, Sabine, went to the Greek island Lesvos, as a clown of the troupe Clowns Without Borders. She performed for the refugees who were making the dangerous journeys by the sea. Media organizations from all over the world were covering the events. Overwhelmed by the excess of media interventions, I needed to observe and … understand. In February 2016, I decided to follow my sister on her next trip. Once there, all of my plans and intentions changed; we were denied access to all camps. We ended up waiting ... and waiting not sure for what. I felt like a refugee myself, anxieties were caused by a returning war and I felt an urgent need to go “back home”.
Going back home meant entering memories of war, of my family and I, getting displaced from one place to another. All of these memories were awakening while I was filming the clowns waiting, and wondering. When I was 2, my parents fled the Lebanese civil war and went to Athens. Today, 40 years later, history is repeating itself, with different people and myself in that same place looking at it from a different perspective.