Synopsis
Filmed over the course of two years, Fighting Through the Night is a long journey to the heart of Greece today. In this country thrown into torment by a totalitarian economy, institutional violence is met with stubborn resistance. Driven by both complementary and dissonant energies, the film is suffused with a desire for freedom and the rebellious power of the people it brings together. Whether they are native Athenians, Syrian or Afghan refugees, cleaning women or unemployed longshoremen, volunteer doctors or the homeless, all these men and women, all their stories, respond to each other and weave unexpected connections. By following the people who are struggling to build a different future, Fighting Through the Night leads us to the insight that amidst today’s chaos, a new shared world, its shape still uncertain, is slowly emerging.
A word from Tënk
Immigrant that I am, now with well-established roots, I take in the long line of refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mali and Libya with a mix of apprehension and survivor’s guilt. Such is the power of this film: it creates the space and time needed to accompany these refugees. We absorb every detail—how much water is left in their canteens before they cross the desert, their clothes, their headdresses, their meager baggage…The anonymous landscapes that they travel through remind me of Pasolini’s dusty pathways. To paraphrase him, “A civilization of consumption’s power is in successfully destroying specific realities, by removing the reality of the many ways we can be human.”
Elsewhere, but not far, in the streets of Athens, we watch as women who were hired to clean ministry offices, and were subsequently laid off in the name of austerity, fight back. Container ships—enormous Lego toys for those who hold power—cross the screen. Fighting Through the Night has a tone not unlike that of an ancient Greek oracle—a term also used, by the way, to mean “an answer.”
Carlos Ferrand
Filmmaker
