Wadim
A good job of critiquing immigration policy, but the film fails to make a human connection.
DIRECTED BY CARSTEN RAU and HAUKE WENDLER (Germany, World Showcase)
Monday, April 30, 6:30 p.m.
Cumberland Three (159 Cumberland Street)
Tuesday, May 1, 1:30 p.m.
Cumberland Two (159 Cumberland Street)
Wadim, the new documentary from German directors Carsten Rau and Hauke Wendler, ought to be considerably more moving than it is. The story of a young man who committed suicide after beind rendered stateless and separated from his family due to a mixture of bureaucratic callousness and international disputes, Wadim should be gut-wrenching. Instead, it’s just kind of unsettling.
The major problem is that, try as they might, Rau and Wendler can’t quite manage to create a connection between the viewer and the titular character. Footage of Wadim (whose surname is never revealed) is thin on the ground. The people who knew him—his parents, his friends, his high school girlfriend—can’t quite manage to capture what he was like, apart from some basic likes and dislikes. We feel their pain when they describe losing him when he was deported from Germany (where he was raised) and sent back to Latvia, a country he scarcely remembered and that didn’t particularly want him, an ethnic Russian. What we don’t get is a sense of how terrifying that must have been for Wadim.
The most heart-wrenching parts of the film don’t deal directly with Wadim at all. Instead, they show a process that Wadim was involved with countless times, with temporary residents rushing and trampling each other at immigration offices, desperate to get their visas extended. More than any of the interviews with Wadim’s friends and family, these scenes portray how frustrating and terrifying it must be to constantly be under threat of deportation.
Rau and Wendler do a good job of shining a light on one of their country’s major social problems; unfortunately, they don’t do nearly as good a job of letting us get to know their subject.