Europa (2021)

Europa, released in 2021 and running a lean 72 minutes, arrives from an unusual co-production between Iraq, Italy and Kuwait, backed by Radical Plans Ltd, the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. It was directed by Haider Rashid, an Iraqi-Italian filmmaker who shot the film on location across the forested border regions between Turkey and Bulgaria. The subject matter is rooted in a grim and very real phenomenon: the use of organised vigilante groups by some Bulgarian nationals to hunt down migrants attempting to cross into Europe on foot, a practice that had been documented by journalists and human rights organisations in the years before the film was made. Rashid's decision to frame this as a near-real-time survival thriller, stripped of expository dialogue and conventional narrative scaffolding, was a deliberate one. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it screened in the Orizzonti section, and it drew considerable attention as a piece of political filmmaking arriving from a part of the world not often associated with European co-productions. If you have any interest in Iraqi cinema, the blog has also covered 16/03 and Revolutionary Memories of Bahman who loved Leila, both of which offer a sense of what Iraqi filmmakers have been producing in recent decades.

The film centres on Kamal, played by Adam Ali, an Iraqi man making the crossing into Bulgaria who is captured by border police, escapes, and then spends the remainder of the film wounded and on the run through dense woodland, hunted by armed men and fighting simply to stay alive. The cast is small, with Svetlana Yancheva, Mohamed Zouaoui, Pietro Ciciriello and Ivan Forlani rounding out the principal players. Adam Ali carries almost the entire film on his own, a physically punishing performance given that the role demands sustained exertion across nearly every frame. Rashid's approach is minimalist in the extreme: very little dialogue, no score to speak of, and a visual grammar that keeps the camera close and the forest oppressive. The cinematography received considerable praise on the festival circuit. Whether the formal experiment pays off as a piece of drama is, of course, another matter entirely, and that is precisely what the review below addresses. For a contrasting example of how stripped-back thriller filmmaking can work, it is worth looking back at the blog's piece on Donnie Brasco (1997), and for another recent film from the 2020s that goes its own formal route, there is also the review of Tiger Stripes.

A-z World Movie Tour Jordan This movie was effectively 72 minutes of heavy breathing and grunting in forests. It was a noble idea but the execution was very poor. Picture quality was great but honestly after 10 minutes nothing changes in the movie at all. It's just rinse and repeat. Heavy breathing, grunting. The ending sequence was 10 minutes of the main guy lying in a boat heavy breathing. One continuous shot. Yeah, pretty much very little to like about this

And that really is the crux of it for me. The intention here is not in question, and there is something to be said for a film willing to put its politics on the screen without wrapping them in comfortable drama. But good intentions and formal ambition only carry you so far when the actual experience of watching is so relentlessly one-note. Seventy-two minutes is already a short runtime by any measure, and yet it still managed to feel padded. I came away respecting what Rashid was trying to do far more than I enjoyed the film itself, which is a polite but honest way of saying this one is probably best reserved for the most dedicated of festival completists. Sometimes the concept and the film are not quite the same thing.

Rating: ★  | Year: 2021  | Watched: 2025-07-03

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Europa (2021) on YouTube

Where to watch

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Iraq: 16/03 (2017) · Revolutionary Memories of Bahman who loved Leila (2012)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)