The Interpreter, based on field research by geographer Makrem Mandhouj, proposes a perspective on mobility towards Europe as it can be perceived and experienced from the Maghreb. The video evokes the time between a clandestine crossing of the Mediterranean Sea at the end of the 90’s and a recent forced return. The narrator acts as the interpreter of the words of two young fishermen and former smugglers met in a village near Monastir, in Tunisian Sahel. He indicates the conditions in which these meetings took place and he comments on the process of filmmaking itself. The Interpreter renders an account of the difficulty of putting into narrative one’s own history, as well as of the possibility of openly testifying in a context of criminalisation of undocumented migration and deprivation of freedom of speech.
