Eldorado

Throughout history, there have always been refugees. They used to come from places closer to home: In the lean years of WW II and its direct aftermath, the family of Swiss director Markus Imhoof, a small boy of four years at the time, took in Giovanna, an undernourished eight-year-old Italian girl as part of a limited-term program for children. After the end of her stay, she had to go back to Italy. The Imhoof family privately arranged for Giovanna to come back to visit for a second time. In the end, the Swiss government insisted on sending Giovanna back to Italy. She died of illness at the age of thirteen, soon after being forced to return. Imhoof takes this early experience of personal loss as a point of entry to the ongoing refugee crisis, the biggest mass displacement of people since WW II. With extraordinary access, Imhoof takes us on a journey with deep personal roots through the Italian warships of Operation Mare Nostrum, refugee camps in Southern Italy, asylum hearings with Swiss authorities, all designed to turn back refugees at all levels. What emerges is a stark picture of an absurd and inhuman process that fails to address a human tragedy: a crisis caused by economic imbalances turning the rich countries of the North into the Eldorado that so many of the less fortunate try to reach at all cost. The “Promised Land” is based on a broken promise.