Dwelling Among the Gods: today’s migration crisis as a classical Greek tragedy
in Rabat International Author Film Festival
by Beat Glur
FICAR, the International Author Film Festival in the Moroccan capital Rabat, feted its 30th anniversary from November 8 to 14. But it was not much of a bash. Apart from the opening event and the award night with local celebrities on the red carpet, the festival remained an insider event. Not a single poster or banner to be seen in town, no festive atmosphere, empty cinemas.
FICAR is largely overshadowed by the Marrakech International Film Festival; the latter’s 22nd edition runs shortly after the Rabat festival from November 28 to December 6. While Marrakech showcases world and international premieres, Rabat’s twelve competition films have already widely travelled. Yet Artistic Director Malak Dahmouni still managed to put together a diverse competition, with films ranging from Japan to Canada, Mexico, Turkey and Montenegro, but with its main focus on cinema from the Maghreb countries.
Although the world is in turmoil, with wars, hunger and despair raging, the majority of FICAR’s 2025 competition films tell family stories and treat personal problems. One of the few exceptions was Serbian director Vuj Rsumovic’s second feature, Dwelling Among the Gods, a Serbian-Italian-Croatian co-production that world premiered in August 2024 at Sarajevo Film Festival. Previous to that, Rsumovic’s debut film, No One’s Child (2014), world premiered at the 71st Venice Film Festival’s Critic’s Week..
The migration crisis is today’s most talked-about political issue in Europe; many films, both fiction and documentaries, have treated the subject in the last few years. Dwelling Among the Gods’s end credit notes that “more than 50,000 people have died trying to reach Europe in the past three decades; of those, almost 90% were buried as Unknown”. Rsumovic’s film shows the bureaucratic obstacles immigrants face in trying to identify themselves or even a relative: the film’s story is rooted in true events that were and still are happening along the Balkan Route.
Unfolding like a classical Greek tragedy, the film develops its story slowly and, consequently, towards a bittersweet ending. The main protagonist is a young Afghan woman, Fereshteh, who reaches Belgrade with her husband and three children. There, she learns that her brother, who has arrived in Belgrade at an earlier date, may have drowned in a local river and is soon to be buried as an unidentified person. Fereshteh manages, after many obstacles, to get a DNA sample from her father in Afghanistan to prove that the dead man is her brother. Fereshteh is played with intensity by Afghan-born Iranian actress Fereshteh Hosseini, who features within almost every scene of the film. Hosseini’s truly mesmerizing performance won the Best Actress Award in Rabat.
Dwelling Among the Gods focusses deep into the universal issues of dignity, humanity and religious freedom, reminding us of Sophocles’ Antigone (c. 442-440 BC), where a young woman insists on her right to bury one of her brothers according to family tradition. Within the film’s classical narrative structure, every legal or practical obstacle confronting Fereshteh is followed by an even bigger bureaucratic one. The Hungarian government is about to close its border with Serbia: the clock is ticking to leave as soon as possible and head north. But Fereshteh leaves no doubt that she will not leave Belgrade before a decent burial for her brother, and under his own name, have taken place.
Thanks to Nikola (Nikola Ristanovski), a local translator and Fereshteh’s closest ally in her struggle, she finally manages to prove her brother’s identity and his funeral can take place. But her father, who now wants his son’s dead body returned back to Afghanistan, ultimately becomes Fereshteh’s final and biggest obstacle. But, for the first time in her life, she decides for herself and disobeys her father.
By Beat Glur
Edited by Johnny Murray
Copyright FIPRESCI