The Great Wall

Inspired by Franz Kafka’s short story “The Great Wall of China”, Irish filmmaker Tadhg O’Sullivan chooses poetic images to document the present-day wall that Europe is building. Concrete, barbed wire, fences as high as houses, watchtowers and no man’s land. A young African man brushes his teeth amid the rubble at the border, waiting. We see patrolling police officers, a cooking fire, heavily armed border guards. And children playing, wherever they are.

In black-and-white security camera footage, we join the search for people trying to find holes in the net. Names and locations are never mentioned, but the Greek coast and the southernmost point of Europe, where the Spanish enclave of Melilla protrudes into North Africa, are clearly recognizable. Further north in Europe, a world of gleaming steel and glass has been constructed.

The wall in Kafka’s story was built to protect against the “peoples of the north”. The questions that this documentary implicitly raises is what exactly is the modern surveillance wall supposed to be protecting, and against whom?