The New Country

 

In the opening scene of "The New Country," roommates Ali (Mike Almayehu), a 15-year-old Somali, and Massoud (Michalis Koutsogiannakis), a forty-something Iranian, watch helplessly as Swedish immigration cops round up fellow residents at their hostel. They know the same fate awaits them as their own bids for asylum are coming to a fruitless end.

 

After buying a decrepit Mazda for $100, Massoud returns to the hostel to gather up his belongings and take it on the lam. Ali, who sees their escape partly as a lark, joins him. As the two men drive down the city street, the teenager sticks his head out the window and yells " I love Sweden" at the top of his lungs. Massoud, whose essentially saturnine disposition has grown only darker in exile, pulls him back into the car with a stern warning that they are illegal immigrants and not out on a joy ride.

 

We learn that if Massoud is returned to Iran, he faces a 25-year prison term or even execution for what we assume are political offenses to the Islamic regime. Sweden is not a promised land to him, just a place where he can perhaps survive at best. Ali's dream is to win a gold medal for the Swedish Olympic team as a marathon runner. He is always dressed in a track uniform and a Swedish souvenir t-shirt. Despite his youthful and naïve exuberance, Ali's background is just as grim as Massoud's. During a militia raid on his village in Somalia, he alone survived. Nearly every night, after waking up in a panic over memories of the raid, Massoud offers solace and helps him go back to sleep.

 

Out on the open road, Ali spots a strawberry farm. Massoud reluctantly allows him to go find work there. As the farmer observes the approaching youth, he tells his wife, "What is that black nigger doing here?" Swedes are not put forward in the most flattering light in this film. They are racist and they are smug. Director Geir Jörgenson's affections are reserved exclusively for those of his countrymen who can transcend narrowness of outlook, in one case a woman who shelters immigrants, including Massoud and Ali, in her basement--in another case, a youthful hitchhiker who makes them his guests at his family's seaside mansion because they, unlike his wealthy parents, are "cool".

 

Eventually they are joined by Louise, a former Miss Sweden fleeing from the clutches of a porn movie director who has lured her to a country home near the strawberry farm with false promises about being filmed nude in a garden (she has had a spotty career in x-rated magazines.) When she complains to the director that she is too good for porn, he replies that she is no longer Miss Sweden and should take any work that comes her way. (When she is not posing nude, she is flipping hamburgers in a fast food joint.) She, like the two illegal immigrants, is not part of Sweden's golden elite.

 

"The New Country" is the latest entry in a genre of films that made its first appearance in the 1978 "Bread and Chocolate," a tale of an Italian waiter trying desperately to elude immigration officials in Switzerland. In these films, a likeable immigrant from a materially impoverished south is in stark contrast to the hostile forces of a spiritually impoverished north. Other films in this genre are "Otomo", "La Promesse" and "La Ciudad" that are all reviewed at: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture.htm.

 

Jörgenson's  film is not perfect. The film often loses momentum as the screenplay offers up one picaresque moment or another to keep the plot-line going. Some are less successful than others. At its best, it shows the older man succumbing to Ali's adventurous spirit. When they are forced to paint their jalopy to avoid the cops, the youth insists on painting the car red with white trim even though it will probably attract attention. Watching the garish beat-up car traverse its way down a highway studded with late-model Volvos and Saabs becomes an ongoing visual sight gag.

 

"The New Country" is part of the annual New Directors/New Films Series co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. This fare, largely drawn from other countries and independently produced, is in stark contrast to the bilge celebrated at the Oscars. Although most of these films will never show up in theaters for a regular run, it is important to know about their existence. As American multinational media/entertainment companies tighten their grip on world markets, it is vitally important for alternative visions to stay alive. As films like "The New Country" continue to be made despite all obstacles, we will be reminded of what it means to be human.