Not to be confused with Haider Rashid’s 2021 thriller of the same name, drama Europa (2023) from Iranian-Austrian writer-director Sudabeh Mortezai was nominated for Best Film in Official Competition at LFF 2023. A slow-burn thriller of corporate defiance and corruption set in rural Albania, it stars German actor Lilith Stangenberg in the lead role of Beate Winter, an ambitious executive of a mysterious corporation called ‘Europa’ that must persuade locals to part with land and livelihoods for unclear, nefarious reasons – all for the euro and not the environment.
The term ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ aptly fits here, as a compelling, stoic and quite ambiguous Stangenberg as Beate ‘hunts’ around stunning countryside, targeting her prey, befriending them and then spinning stories of woe or enlightenment to make the kill and get the contracts signed. With her male assistant Lasse (Tobias Winter) in tow, there is a sense that both are ‘stuck’ in a groundhog situation until the brusque corporate voice on the other end of the phone is satisfied. Only then can they go home.
Charm them or threaten them, this rather unsettling and ever curious journey the viewer is taken on by a strong female protagonist, is one we are unwillingly party to. Much like a hostage situation, where the picturesque surroundings disarm us as we follow Beate and team around, hoping that our subconscious mind is wrong about the planned destruction of nature and civilisation in the name of construction is not already in the pipeline.
One local who digs his heels and becomes an anti-hero in is middle-aged farmer and beekeeper Jetnor (Jetnor Gorezi) who affectionately tends to his hives and crops in idyllic moments of calm, but who is then hounded by Beate and her offer of a Europa grant for his college-age daughter Besa (Steljona Kadillari) to study to become a doctor.
The film’s opening scene is one of the most urgent and startling experienced in a long time and concerns an angry Jetnor, as it bookends the story in conclusion. Another nightmarish moment is when the seemingly reasonable, albeit detached businesswoman Beate is alerted to trespassers at a planned company construction site and we again, are witness to how she chillingly deals with them.
Mortezai shows her ability for handling non-actors in Gorezi and Kadillari, with their unpolished performances adding to the almost cinéma-vérité feel at times, like we are watching a documentary instead. However, once we have inhaled many unspoiled landscapes captured by cinematographer Klemens Hufnagl, the film’s ample reflective moments do begin to feel drawn out, before we returned to a room with a restraint Beate for more bargaining.
Europa is a curiously haunting study of corporate greed and environmental and cultural peril at force. With its scenic splendor, it naturally plays well at a film festival, questioning globalisation for profit. However, as a commercial release, finding its audience might prove trickier, however well intended it is concept is.
