Director Noaz Deshe talks to Euronews Culture about his new film 'Xoftex' and the challenge of making an uplifting and unique portrayal of the hopes and dreams of refugees taken in by Greece after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. In a year of elections which have seen far right parties achieve remarkable gains largely stoked by fear of immigrants and refugees, one remarkable new film - - portrays the plight of asylum seekers not via the usual grinding despair of social reality but through humour, fantasy and the occasional zombie. “Empathy should not be a bonus, it should be built in,” film director Noaz Deshe says.
“It's not something we should even need to mention. It's a basic compound of you being a human being. And we're losing it.
” I’m talking to Deshe about his fantastic new film . We’re on the terrace of the Pupp Hotel, the baroque beauty which inspired Wes Anderson’s . Deshe’s film was screened at last week's that runs in the Czech spa town every July.
As we talk Rolls Royces disgorge movie stars and producers below us, but we’re here to talk about a wholly different movement of people: the refugee crisis that struck Greece in the wake of the Syrian Civil War. Xoftex is a refugee camp where the detainees wait to learn their fate as asylum seekers. “I changed the name because it's an actual place.
It was behind an industrial train yard and trains would stop before they heading for the Balkans. Gang activity was rife and people were trying to g.
