Passager

Asef is a young Afghan refugee who left his country in search a safer life conditions. He arrived in Greece in 2016 and was moved to the refugee camps in Athens, Piraeus port and then to Eleniko. During this period, he struggles several times to cross into Western Europe. Few months later, Asef meets Arjang Omrani and after a while they decided to make a diary film about Asef’s everyday life in Greece and his attempts to flee to other countries. Asef was coached by Arjang Omrani during the film process in which he was learning about ideas of filming, montage and storytelling. Using his own mobile phone Asef manages to collect his video diaries that lasted for the next eight months. While showing his surroundings, Asef gives insightful portraits of Eleniko refugee camp, Victoria park in Athens, where he goes to contact the smugglers. Also his experiences in Patra, in the abandoned wood factory where he was sheltering, and the port where he tries to hide under the trucks that are waiting to embark on ferries to go to Italy. The young Afghan refugee not only shows the foreign places of passage but also he reflects upon his motivations of getting into this journey and the constraints and difficulties he has gone through. “Why can’t I have a normal life!” speaks out Asef from the rooftop of a deserted wood factory. He talks about his dreams and desires while questioning the universal injustice in people’s life conditions.

Arjang Omrani

Audio-Visual Anthropologist and Filmmaker based in Athens.
Born in 1972 in Tehran and holds a master degree in Visual and Media Anthropology from Free University of Berlin.
Lecturing Audio-Visual Anthropology at the university of Muenster (Germany) with experience of teaching and organising seminars and workshops at different institutes such as University of Cologne and the school of Media Art of Cologne (KHM)
Arjang is engaged with Audio-Visual, Sensorial, and Performative modes of presentation in
Anthropological studies and human life, most notably, transcultural condition.
His works are intertwined both in theoretical field by producing ideas and presenting in academic in various international festivals, exhibitions and venues.
Some major works of his are feature length films; Parallax 2011, On the Run 2013 (granted by the Academy der Kunst der Welt) Passager (2018). Shorts such as Stereotype 2010, Unless the water is safer than the land 2015. Performances; Collaborating in a talk show performance ‘Camp Anti Camp’ with Phil collins, in Mousonturm in Frankfurt2012, collaboration in interactive artistic web-project www.diwans.org as video artist 2012, and the Interactive video installation “Synapse” 2015.