Review of Out of Sight – the mountain idyll on the Swiss border is a decorated haven for asylum seekers | Movie

Lthe Bürglkopf mountain on the Swiss-Austrian border, is the perfect Alpine destination, with green fields and scenic roads. The tranquil idyll is a popular holiday destination, attracting thousands of visitors every year. Some guests, however, are less welcome than others. In the middle of the dense forest on top of the mountain there is a place called a refugee camp, where asylum seekers are kept for months, even years. In Lisa Polster’s effective writing, one of the first things about the place is the surrounding area and the window of the moving car. A tightly composed shot reveals the mystery that hides the place, whose inhabitants are described as a prison rather than a hideout.

Through interviews with people who live here, Polster’s film describes many events – despite the fact that the site rejects the project. Many asylum seekers talk about poor living conditions, lack of legal assistance, and the impossibility of social integration due to the camp’s remote location. Their legal confusion, caused by long delays in programming, leads to emotional stress. In another poignant scene, an inmate looks jealously at the cows that graze nearby, jealous of their freedom of movement. With a curfew and limited entertainment on offer, the Bürglkopf campsite’s curfew continues to seem endless.

Despite the film’s head-on approach, there is a gentleness to the way the prisoners are portrayed. These guys are always demonized by the right-wing press, yet in Polster’s film they are made up of small figures against the scale of the landscape. To rob these men of their time, the only precious commodity they can call their own, is to deny them any kind of future.