The Valley brings you right into the still unfolding European migration crisis. The film is set at a flashpoint in an escalating fight between individual citizens and state authorities. As this tension becomes increasingly loaded, the authorities violate human rights and break European regulations. Within this struggle between citizens’ moral values, and the fight for legal rights in a complex situation, is a deep conflict with great importance for our European future.
Director: Nuno Escudeiro
55 min. France, 2019
Dialogue: French, Italian & English
Festival theme: Migration
Europe’s greatest humanitarian test occurred when the migrant crisis peaked in 2015. Moral and ethical demands for action rubbed up against the instincts of populist nationalist governments and the inadequacy of pan-European agreements on the treatment of refugees and migrants. Practical concerns, such as the policing of the common Schengen border and the Operation Sofia in the Southern Mediterranean, showed the need for a collective approach to the crisis. But they showed also the mind-boggling complexity of tackling an unprecedented movement of people while trying to combine humanitarian values with security issues. Angela Merkel’s decision to host a million Syrians has become a touchstone for far-right and Islamophobic mobilisation. In the coming elections, the EU will have to prove that it is capable of respecting its fundamental values without betraying the legitimate expectations of guaranteeing the security of its citizens.