Hadamo

A barrier should have been built at the Brenner Pass, on the border with Austria. In the spring of 2016, the Austrian government declared that it wanted to erect a fence on the border, in the Alps, in order to monitor the migration flow from Italy, at the closure of the Balkan routes. After two years, the dreaded invasion has not yet occurred and the fence lies stored in the containers, unused, while the migrant registration center that was built has never entered into operation. In a country that traces borders and tensions, politics and the media are far from understanding the global phenomena that Europe is undergoing. The director Nikolaus Geyrhalter brings his camera to the valleys and the towns, framing the landscapes and the faces of the inhabitants, listening to their voices without ever judging their fears and hopes, in the shadow of a spectre that is late in manifesting itself. A border region thus becomes the mirror of an increasingly politically divided Europe. In the shadow of the Alps, the long shots of Geyrhalter's camera reveal an increasingly urgent debate on the state of Europe.