a documentary film

A jacket hangs from a tree to the west, jeans hang from a tree to the east. The garments that decorate Italy's wildly different mountain borders are probably the only thing they have in common. Few have witnessed both. Those that have can perhaps understand the country in ways the rest of us can't.

This is one of the most visited nations in the world, with 65 million international tourists expected in 2024, now exceeding the resident population for the first time. Neighbouring France surpasses even Italy, with over 100 million arriving. The vast ski resort that straddles the border between the two exemplifies this movement, with over 10 million passages recorded in a winter. Its lifts carry those with credit across the border, legs dangling free, ski passes rather than passports, so they can glide back down over the snow that's sprayed each night. Not all are welcome. A few try to cross the same border with their own legs, but they trudge through the snow, sinking into it, at risk of being pushed back by the police who hunt them. They climb higher and higher to avoid contact, often at night, hoping to one day find a place to stay. Many have already crossed the desolate ruin of the abandoned Karst mountains, and have seen glimpses of Trieste, Venice, Verona, Garda, Milan and Turin, some of the world's most desirable destinations – but in the end Italy was not their destination. Italy was no place for them.

This film traces a humble journey across famous but unfamiliar lands, asking what such a perspective reveals about these dramatically changing landscapes. The juxtaposition of the two mountain ranges, abruptly connected by this precarious journey, creates for us a kind of prism that poses urgent questions about our parallel lives and collective values. It's often called the 'migrant route', but is it only those migrating that find themselves in unrecognisable places, or are we all in transit along the consumer route?

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

Between 2022-23 I was collaborating with the University of Parma on the MOBS research project ('Mobilities, solidarities and imaginaries across the borders: spaces of transit and encounter'), tasked with studying migration at the mountain frontier between Italy and France and producing written and photographic material to be used in workshops we held there with social workers, volunteers and others involved in the local solidarity movement. 

Having observed and listened to many stories of migration from a stationary point there at the border, I came to realise that all these movements were taking place within the fixed framing of my gaze. A stable point of view is no less an active positioning, and mine replicated that of the inhabitants, the social workers, the police – my fellow sedentaries. If I was to produce material that might encourage deeper awareness and better understanding, inviting people to reflect and reconsider their experiences, I felt I needed to explore a new approach.

That winter most of those risking the alpine crossing had arrived from the Balkan route via Trieste, many just a day or two earlier, and I was struck by the sad symmetry of their brief transitory sojourn in Italy, that so much effort was made to get here across one mountain only to leave again over another, the 600 km between them superato in just a few hours by train. The railways played a surprisingly key role in other ways too: I discovered it was an old, discontinued railway guiding people across the disorientating Karst towards Italy, while it was the protest movement against a new, high-speed railway in the Susa Valley that had helped set in motion the local solidarity movement where people were managing to get out of Italy. 

Mountain–plain–mountain, on foot–by train–on foot. I decided to follow this route for myself by the same means and at the same pace, hoping to arrive at a more empathetic reading of the journey. But rather than photographing the people and risking participating in the othering of their experience (not to mention for other obvious ethical and legal reasons), I tried to photograph what someone in such a position might see – the landscapes witnessed – reversing the gaze and inverting the sedentary representation of migration. In this way, the usual static vision portraying unknown people in transit would be replaced by a mobile vision portraying an unknown country in transition.

The images produced through this approach bear traces of sedimentary histories that together form a dynamic, multifaceted landscape, but it's very much the subjective perspective that reveals these traces. It's not a single photograph that discloses this meaning, but rather the combination and interaction of the images that reveals something. The true meaning can be found – or rather, created – between the photographs, and will be different for each observer in relation to their unique lives and memories. Here was a possibility. Images evoke other images, recalling other moments and emotions, and I asked myself whether the inherent ambiguity of photography might help translate such dizzyingly differing experiences, bringing disparate lives into conversation. Many who see this film will have the documents and resources to travel as if living in an alternative reality, but we've all been cold, lost or looked over our shoulder at some point. Perhaps photography, in touching memories of actions and experiences, in returning life to its verbs, can create little bridges where words and nouns keep us separate. Doubts abound, but along the way I found myself saying: I can't live this experience of yours, nor truly comprehend what you are going through, but in trying I might get closer. 

I imagine that the meaning of this little film will quickly transform in time, as will the routes and the landscapes depicted, but it seemed to me in those dark nights on the mountain of utmost importance to chronicle something of these incredible, heartbreaking journeys, so as they are not lost to a disinterested history like who knows how many garments in the weeds. Landscapes belong no less to those migrating, on the contrary, sometimes it takes a little movement to see where we're at.

Opher Thomson, September 2024