“The Great Wall has been completed at its most southerly point.” So begins Kafka’s At the Building of the Great Wall of China, the inspiration for Tadgh O’Sullivan’s experimental documentary.
Investigating the ways in which lives are framed and separated by borders – whether physical, economical and political – the film proceeds slowly and artfully across unidentified, often fortified landscapes. O’Sullivan finds beauty in a procession of man-made structures, but also investigates our urge to erect barriers and live apart from one another.
We start at Europe’s militarised southern frontier. With echoes of the famous Chinese wall, Europe has also been building a great, seemingly unending series of borders and barriers – a divisive maze so piecemeal it has gone largely unnoticed, at least by those privileged enough to be the right side of it.
The movie utilises security footage of people attempting to scale giant walls and tracks military planes as they observe and guard borders.
The purpose is clear: he wants us to consider what it is to be European and physically cut off from the world around us.
O’Sullivan’s visual style is striking and he deploys silence with considerable skill. Stunning to watch and deeply provocative, this is a documentary like nothing you’ve seen before.