The Border (Slovakia 2009, Jaroslav Vojtek, 72 min)

Event information

THE BORDER
A documentary about the absurdity of how political decisions on paper can have disastrous effects on the ground. The village of Slemence in 1946 suddenly found itself divided between two countries: Czechoslovakia and the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), when the border between those two countries was drawn at random. Families call to each other over the fence to pass on the latest news about weddings and funerals, and have to travel 150 km to get a visa to visit the other side.
A Slovakian film crew spent seven years in Slemence. They were there when an EU referendum made border controls even stricter; ironic given the 20th anniversary festivities of the fall of the Berlin Wall was to celebrate living in a Europe without borders..

+ EXIT
This documentary is made up up footage shot in October 1989 on the closed border of Poland and West Germany, as refugees attempt to escape to the West. It’s a fascinating document, given what we now happened just a month after this footage was filmed.