“In a fiction feature, nobody would have believed it.”
Filmmaker Nina Kusturica about her film “Little Alien”
in an interview with Corinna Milborn
How did this film about teenage refugees come to be made?
Before I start a movie, I ask questions, such as: What interests me? And what about it is ahead of its time? I like the idea of pulling the future into the present. Then I ask myself: Do I want to do it? Then you live with the topic for about two years if everything goes well. And finally: What can I contribute? The answers were all positive with this topic—part of the reason being that I was a refugee once myself. However, for a long time I thought about whether it should be a feature or a documentary. During preproduction I had an appointment with some local authorities, where a young refugee was asked to decide when he was supposedly born. He only knew the year and had to decide on the exact date—with all the consequences, such as the date for coming of legal age. This was so absurd that I knew then: This is going to be a documentary. If I put a scene like this in a script, nobody would believe it.
You yourself came to Austria as a refugee from Bosnia. Did you see yourself in that young man?
Yes, very much so. My situation wasn’t necessarily comparable—I came with my family, which is a lot easier, of course. But those initial difficulties, the images of Austria, the naiveté with which one enters this new country—I recognized that. I was exactly the same. It was encouraging to see that after all this time, my problems at the time weren’t anything special. It seems to be the same for everybody.
You spent a lot of time with the protagonists. How did you meet and select them?
We had to be with them from the very beginning, so the starting point was the refugee camp in Traiskirchen. There, however, we were immediately confronted with a stipulation: We weren’t allowed to talk to anybody. We were shown the sanitary facilities, empty buildings, the computer for the fingerprints. At that time there were 700 refugees at Traiskirchen, 80 of them in the building for minors, and we weren’t allowed to talk to any of them. In addition, the director remarked disparagingly that, for the most part, they weren’t teenagers anyway—he’d even had this gray-haired guy once who insisted he was 17. I myself turned gray when the war broke out in Bosnia. I was 17 at the time, and I’ve been coloring my hair ever since. This cynicism encouraged me. This film had to be made.
How did you get close to these teenagers under these circumstances?
We eventually managed to encounter them on one of their day trips, which volunteers go on with the teenagers. We met them in the vineyards around Baden, and on a hunch, we had interpreters with us. There in the woods we explained the project and told them: Whoever wants to participate should go to the Kebabstube coffee shop in Traiskirchen tomorrow. And there we sat, wondering: Who’s going to show up? Who’s going to be in the film? But it worked.
You got very close to the protagonists—they talk to each other as if they weren’t on camera, as if they were by themselves. How did you manage that?
From the beginning it was our goal to participate in the lives of these teenagers without looking through a keyhole. This was made possible by the very long duration of shooting: time, time, time. We became a regular part of their lives. Of course, that came with a big responsibility. I wanted to make a film they would like and even show their grandchildren someday.
How did you manage to keep a professional distance?
At first, we thought a lot about establishing boundaries. But those young people let us into their lives, we let them into ours. It was very beautiful and often also very moving. Achmad, for example, the young Somali, was arrested and allowed one phone call before being deported to Italy. He called us. We managed to get him out of jail because he had been wrongly arrested. If he hadn’t taken our card, he wouldn’t be here now. Things like that establish a bond between people: Now I have 20 new friends.
You were also present during many trips to the authorities. Was it difficult to obtain permits for filming?
It was a constant struggle. The social workers for these young adults are very cautious, the authorities sometimes completely uncooperative. For example, at the Ministry of the Interior we had no access at all: We were never present at any of the interviews, and only found out what happened during them from the teenagers.
You show a great deal of these young people at dances, or at a snowball fight. Why did you decide to dedicate so much space to everyday life and those more pleasant aspects?
That was very important to me! There is this way of thinking that foreigners are “different.” I wanted to show that there is no difference. The girls get their clothes from a charity shop rather than a store. But they think like any other girls: Do I want a sweater with or without a collar? Therefore, these scenes are for identification.
Isn’t there danger of a regarding a certain reflex response, such as “They seem to be doing fine”?
We’ve had that reaction. For example: They even have cell phones! Of course they do. They’re teenagers—they would rather starve than go without a cell phone. The image of the barefoot refugee is no longer true for the ones who made it all the way to Austria. The “have-not” aspect shifts: At the border it’s still the lack of food. Here it’s the waiting, being kept weak, being at somebody’s mercy, being kept from going to school, from working, from gathering strength.
On three occasions you also filmed at the EU’s borders. For me, those scenes are some of the most moving in the film. Why the decision to leave these teenagers’ microcosm in Vienna?
We wanted to show that they didn’t just drop in from the sky, they’ve come a long ways. Of course, these borders could be a film all by themselves. So we wanted to tell selected stories which could have easily been part of our protagonists’ journeys. But we also wanted to show the system—the absurdity, the efforts the EU makes to supposedly protect them. And who’s affected.
And there at the borders, you also got very close to the underage refugees, who live under deplorable conditions. Was it difficult to make contact?
They weren’t afraid at all—much less than the ones who had already fought their way to Austria. They’re not nearly as intimidated, but still full of naiveté and hope. They think: There must be a mistake! I must be the only one who’s being treated like this! They want to show that, and asked us over and over again: Tell our story! Show it to the world! They still think: This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening. We had some drastic experiences. The teenagers we filmed in Ceuta were arrested around that time—a typical intimidation tactic, they told us. When we left, we were deeply shocked that we could simply board the ferry while they were chased around and had to remain behind the fence.
Did your protagonists like the film?
This was the most difficult premiere of my life! They laughed a lot but were also sad—it was like after a trip when you get together to look at the photographs. They gave me the feeling that they were proud of the film and stood by it.
What do you hope that moviegoers take away from the experience?
I hope that some leave the theater and say: I got to know a world I wasn’t familiar with. Also, I hope the film makes people think. I would also like to discuss it, preferably with Austrian teenagers: I hope that the film deepens their understanding about the reality of refugees their age. It’s still very difficult to make contact with people when you arrive in Austria.
After all this time with those teenagers—how should the system change?
The entire system is wrong. There are so many opportunities for abuse of power that a few minor regulatory changes won’t fix it. But I was also introduced to some positive projects that work on a small scale, for example, the Connecting People sponsorship project. However, as an artist I don’t have any sweeping solutions to offer: utopian ideas, perhaps. Maybe I’ll make a feature film about this topic someday.
