Thessaloniki (Greece) (AFP)

Like a swarm of migratory birds in search of a welcoming land, the Thessaloniki 60th International Film Festival, which ends on Sunday, features a bunch of films about uprooting, refugees forced to flee their country in war with the children in escheat after the loss of their foster mother.

On the harbor and in the heart of the second largest city in Greece, the festival presents fourteen films in international competition, centered this year on a vision of the land, without boundaries or differences, that an astronaut could see space.

The "utopian vision of an ideal planet" which does not exist, admits the director of the festival, Orestis Andreakakis.

Traditionally focused on the cinematographic works of Eastern Europe, the festival, whose track record is to be unveiled Sunday night, seeks to show how much "things we consider important, such as borders, races or ideologies, are insignificant, "says Yorgos Krassakopoulos, head of international selection.

Certainly, "the roots define us," he says again to AFP, "but some trees growing up can remain bushes and others can reach the sky (...) everything depends on each, and how far we want to go. "

In "Zizotek" by Vardis Marinakis (Greece), a 9-year-old boy abandoned by his mother in the middle of a folklore festival, wanders in the forest in search of his lost landmarks, and in the tearing, tries to rebuild himself a family with a silent hermit, smuggler of illegal immigrants.

Even the uprooting of "Lillian" by Andreas Horvath (Austria), the road movie of a Russian migrant from New York whose visa has expired, reduced to return to a country she knows nothing.

In Maya Da-Rin's "The Fever" (Brazil-France-Germany), a vigilant native on the docks, victim of the racism of his Brazilian colleagues, is shaken by a mysterious fever with the announcement of the departure of his daughter, his ultimate family link to a thousand places of his native village and his Indian roots.

- "Tomorrow I'm going through" -

In the selection of the Greek film, where 17 films produced in Greece are in competition and two shot in Greece, the question of the uprooting of migrants remains ubiquitous in a country once again the first migration gateway in Europe.

Sepideh Farsi's "I will cross tomorrow" (Greece-France-Netherlands-Luxembourg) begins with the flight of migratory birds, a sort of leitmotiv along the route of a young Syrian refugee stranded in Lesbos. Then comes the image of an uprooted tree torn from the ground by the hand of man.

"Symbolic elements on the road to exile," told AFP the Iranian director Sepideh Farsi, herself a refugee in France. "There are so many natural things that reflect the uprooting, Lesbos for example happens to be the natural route of migratory birds, it's fascinating," she says of the Greek island, one of the main "hotspots" of migrants in Europe.

"Meltem" of Basil Doganis (France-Greece), already broadcast in Greece, also traces the uprooting of a young Syrian in Lesbos but also that of a young French of Greek origin back on the island a year after the death of her mother with whom she was scrambled.

"For me, the mourning is uprooting," says the director to AFP. "It is the dual trajectory of the young migrant and the young woman who helps (first) to find his own mother" refugee on the Greek mainland. This "crossover around the maternal figure" will also allow the young Frenchwoman to "reconnect with her roots and her mother", says Basil Doganis.

The festival, which began on October 31, also features several short films in virtual reality. "Mare Nostrum, the nightmare" gives to live the calvary of the exile for the migrants, the tearing out with the family, the country, the roots, the handling of the smugglers, the violence of the weapons, the imprisonment and the sinking in the waters of the Aegean Sea.

© 2019 AFP