User Reviews

This movie is inspired on a real case and works as a strong libel against the way prospective immigrants that come by air are treated by immigration police in airports. This happened in Portugal but I think it is a general practice all over Europe. An Ukrainian woman comes by air from Kiev to the Faro airport in Portugal to join her black husband who works and lives in Lisbon and she is subjected to harsh inquisition measures, violating the most basic human rights such as deprivation of personal freedom, threatening interrogations and humiliating physical and luggage searches. She begins to not being authorized to see her husband who had come to see her at the airport and when she is, he is brought handcuffed to her presence despite the fact that he had already applied to a legal permanent stay in the country. She keeps asking all the time for the presence of a lawyer but that is never granted. She is pressed to sign a false statement saying that she has voluntarily asked to leave the country to Russia (a different country from hers). For that she would have to buy another plane ticket since the return ticket she had is for Kiev in Ukraine. The statement she is asked to sign is in Portuguese a language she doesn't understand. She is diabetic and not given full proper treatment during all this time. Her resistance is finally broken and she finishes to accept to leave the country by the way the authorities wanted. This movie is very sober and realistic in dialogues and black and white very meaningful images. A powerful document in favour of human rights respect. The three main performers, Maria de Medeiros, Makena Diop and Isabel Ruth do a great job respectively as the Ukrainian woman, her husband and the immigration police inspector.