Costa-Gavras Lends Touch of Magic to Immigrant Tale

(www.minpress.gr / Reuters, 06.03.09) “Eden Is West”  Costa Gavras’ new film premiered as a noncompeting selection of the recent Berlin International Film Festival, showing a magical approach to Europe’s big immigration problem. Elias, the main character played by Riccardo Scamarcio, is an immigrant who arrives to a European shore and tries to go to Paris, his perceived paradise. On his ways he faces exploitation by the middle class but finds poor people lending him a helping hand.  The film has strong imagery and Costa-Gavras and co-scripter Jean-Claude Grumberg have tried to give to their hero an essence of the wandering Ulysses.   Costa Gavras has, in the past, been the winner of the foreign-language Oscar for his film “Z”, of Cannes Palme d’Or for the film “Missing” and of Berlin Golden Bear for the film “Music Box”. Read more…

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