Exile

Visar Morina's 2020 film follows a chemical engineer of Kosovan origin living in Germany. He believes he is being frozen out at work, deliberately left off meetings, and that a dead rat has been left at his door. The film keeps it unclear for a long time whether these things are really happening. Uncertainty is the method. Discrimination is often not a provable event but a series of unprovable small moments, and that keeps the character in the position of being both right and paranoid. Misel Maticevic plays the man and Sandra Huller his wife; the scenes at home are as tense as those at work. Morina stages no big explanatory scene. Like the character, the viewer is left unable to tell which glance was genuinely hostile. That method is the film's strength and also what makes it wearing. Who it's for: viewers who like questions of migration and belonging told in the language of psychological thriller. Who it's not for: viewers who want a clear victim and a clear culprit; the film refuses to say who is right.