Visitor (2018)

Refugee crisis is a word that takes on an absurd meaning when you have heard it enough times. And most people have. What does it mean? And how does it encapsulate the suffering we know it refers to, but for which we don't have a better term? Sebastian Cordes's film is an attempt to answer these questions in pictures. Cordes is a stranger - a visitor - on the Greek island of Chios, where 'the signs of crisis' are everywhere. 'Visitor' is closer to photography than film, and every image lets its plethora of signs, differences and possible meanings stand for itself, until the world beyond the frame becomes visible to us. Cordes practices 'slow cinema' as a form of experience, but also lets a longer continuous text - a poem - reflect his own situation as a differentiated outsider and guest. 'Visitor' is a work created by Cordes on his own, without compromises, and outlines a tragedy which is at once remote and close, and for which we still lack an adequate (visual) language.