FEAR: Empathy For The Unknown

The constant influx of refugees from war-torn lands seeking asylum in Europe has gained extra attention in the news lately as Russian troops invade Ukraine and civilians find themselves either arming for battle or fleeing for their lives. Many nearby countries have extended a warm welcome to these Ukrainian refugees, offering them safety and shelter. Yet many of these same countries have turned away other asylum-seekers — both in the past and presently — and treated them with disdain due to cultural differences and the color of their skin. It often feels as though “Refugees Welcome” only applies to those who are white and European, not those who are seen as some kind of “other” — even if, in the end, we are all human.

So it’s hard to think of a more timely film than Fear, a tragicomedy from writer-director Ivaylo Hristov. Set in a small village on the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, the film — Bulgaria’s official submission for Best International Film at this year’s Academy Awards — chronicles the upheaval that occurs when a local widow offers hospitality to an African refugee, much to the chagrin of everyone around her. In highlighting the absurdity inherent in such xenophobia, Fear gives us permission to laugh at people’s close-minded attitudes while also highlighting the bravery of those who take a stand against them.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Svetla (Svetlana Lancheva) was recently laid off from her job as a teacher due to the lack of young children in her small Bulgarian village, leaving her with little to do but talk to her deceased husband at his gravesite. However, her lonely life is injected with some unwelcome excitement when she encounters a refugee from Mali named Bamba (Michael Flemming) while hunting in the forest. Unable to communicate with him — he speaks English, she does not — and unwilling to take responsibility for him, Svetla attempts to hand off Bamba to the local authorities, but they’re too busy trying to take care of a large group of asylum-seekers that just arrived across the border and the media attention that entails. So, with seemingly no other options, she brings him back to her home.

Svetla quickly comes to see that Bamba, a doctor whose wife and children died in the violence engulfing his home country, is just as worthy of being treated like a human being as she is, and a warm friendship springs up between the two of them. Unfortunately, her neighbors don’t see things the same way, embarking on a campaign of harassment and demanding Bamba be removed by the authorities. Despite such strong opposition, Svetla refuses to give in; she’d rather die than give up the one thing that has made her life worth living again.

In playing up the darkly comic side of Svetla and Bamba’s situation, Fear does not make light of it, but rather, emphasizes how insane it is that people would react so violently and hatefully to a white woman offering refuge to a Black man. Indeed, the local officials and neighbors who spit hateful words at Svetla, accusing her of dishonoring her dead husband’s memory by living with Bamba, are ridiculous, and deserve to be laughed at (not, say, given op-eds in The New York Times). In one particularly funny scene, a local reporter attempts to get the head of the border police to exaggerate the dangers of his job on camera for the benefit of her audience, yet he repeatedly refuses to take the bait: No, we don’t often encounter weapons or drugs. No, they’re mostly families with children. When you hear it said out loud, so matter-of-factly, you can’t help but wonder what all the fuss is about.

After the migrants have been intercepted, the tiny village is then sprung with the problem of where to place them; despite the fact that the local hotels are empty, the mayor instead decides to house them in the now-closed school instead, worried that no one will stay in the hotels again if they find out that migrants have slept there. As a young village boy attempts to describe the conditions inside the school for the migrants, he somewhat fumbles the translation: “In the bathroom there is shit, but it’s from the heart”. It’s hard to think of a more absurdly accurate way to describe how so-called do-gooders try to put a PR spin on the ways in which they fail to do the right thing.

Safe and Sound

With an aura that reminds one of Frances McDormand, Lancheva brings gritty realism to the role of Svetla, allowing the audience an intimate glimpse into this character’s evolution from an aimless woman to a fierce warrior. At the beginning of the film, Svetla is almost as close-minded as her neighbors, using the same ugly racial epithets towards Bamba while refusing to take the barrel of her gun off of him. Yet, as she gets to know him, she realizes how wrong she was, reminding us that sometimes people merely fear what they don’t understand.

Like Bamba, Svetla is looking for a second chance at life, though whereas he is trying to escape war and bloodshed, she is trapped by monotony and loneliness. Together, they are able to provide each other with what the other desperately needs, including love and affection. As Bamba, Flemming is also excellent, playing up the fish-out-of-water comedy that arises from this educated man’s sojourn in such a startlingly ignorant village. When Svetla offers him peppers, warning him that they’re hot, Bamba naturally doesn’t understand; he swallows one whole and immediately runs shrieking outside to try and cool off, making the neighbors even more frightened of him than they already are. (Svetla, meanwhile, just shakes her head — she told him they were hot, after all.)

Bamba’s kindness and gentleness stand in stark contrast to the attitudes of the men in Svetla’s village, many of whom have been hankering to get into her bed since her husband died and cannot understand why she’d prefer to spend time with a Black man than them. This sexual jealousy — the feeling that they are seen as inadequate in comparison to this man, the fear that they’ll lose their women to others like him — is what drives the men over the edge from bigotry to outright violence; they don’t seem to care that the particular woman in question is the actually happiest she’s ever been. “Have you ever been happy?” she asks the head of the border police during a climactic confrontation in front of her home. “I can’t remember,” he says, and that tells you all you need to know.

Conclusion:

Shot in stark, high-contrast black and white, Fear is a no-frills film that relies on the strength of its script and central performances to get its message across. That message is one of incredible empathy, encouraging us to look past surface differences and see that we’re all the same underneath; even the barriers posed by language can be easily overcome if one just chooses to try and understand.

What do you think? Are you familiar with Bulgarian cinema? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Fear opens via virtual cinemas and VOD on March 11, 2022.

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