‘Despite the headlines, perception of migration is improving’
Daniel Nelson
The Hostile Environment, Brexit xenophobia, the small boat “invasion”. Does Laura Stahnke, co-director of Migration Collective, think public perception of migrants and migration has changed? Yes - for the better.
“There has been an improvement,” she says. “Statistics have shown that people are happier than they used to be about people coming to the UK. So despite the headlines, the perception of migration is improving.”
It is to counter the media’s negative stance towards migration that the collective runs the annual London Migration Film Festival. The six members of the collective also want to counter the impression given by the media that migration affects only the UK.
How does the festival help? “By counterbalance - by showing a different way of thinking and talking about migration,” says festival co-director, Lily Parrott.
Laura and Lily offer the example of The Crossing, one of 15 feature-length films and 16 shorts at this month’s festival. It’s an animated but dark fairy tale of a film about two children’s escape from an invasion of their homeland. But it takes place in an imagined land with no specific historic events, and, emphasises Laura, “it’s not sensationalist.”
They also point to Leaving to Remain, in which three Roma in England find their lives transformed by Brexit and Covid. Roma lives rarely make it onto the screen, and the film is particularly important because it’s Roma-made and led: they film themselves.
Like most festival screenings it is followed by a Q&A, with director Mira Erdevički and the three real-life stars, Denisa Gannon, Petr Torák and Ondrej Oláh.
And like more than half of the films at this year’s festival, both of these films are directed by women.
While last year’s stand-out success was Flee, an animation about an Afghan refugee, this year Laura and Lily say they are hoping A Tale of Love and Desire will chime with audiences. The film is a sumptuous exploration of the relationship between an 18-year-old French-Algerian man and a Tunisian woman who begin studying classical Arabic poetry together, and their consequent identity-questioning culture clash.
The festival hopes to reach audiences beyond those already sympathetic to migrants. “We always try to get out of our comfort zone and reach new audiences,” says Laura. They do so through an imaginative array of films, by working with a range of cinemas for festival screenings, and through an outreach coordinator whose role is to work with schools and other institutions.
“Even people who are on ‘our side’ have lots to learn about migration,'' says Lily. Convenience Store, for example, focuses on an Uzbek immigrant in Moscow who is being forced to work without pay and endures mental and physical abuse.
“It explores the reasons for modern slavery and what perpetuates it, and we hope use it as an opportunity to teach visitors about the legal framework for trafficking victims in the UK,” she says: “There’s always more to be learned, more to be done.”
The London Migration Film Festival, “Our unique projects, events and activities tackle the intersections of art, academia and action in order to challenge the mainstream rhetoric on migration”, 24-30 November. Info: https://www.migrationcollective.com/
One of the festival events is an Interactive Panel Discussion: On Solidarity and Dissent, on 27 November at the Brixton Ritzy. It will ask How can refugees and others on the move develop solidarity, how can they meaningfully dissent to the current political treatment of migration and resist the dehumanising rhetoric about migration that seeks to divide, how can similarities between people of differing beliefs be highlighted, and what can be done that actually makes a difference?