Exile

Xhafer is from Kosovo, works in a pharmaceutical company, his wife, Nora (Sandra Hüller) is German and recently became a mother for the third time. Between one feeding and the other, he tries to write his doctoral thesis and return to university life. She cannot count on the help of her parents, because they do not accept her husband, a foreigner from Eastern Europe. Xhafer experiences the reluctance of his in-laws at every meeting and this feeling translates into his relationships with others, in particular with colleagues at work. He believes that with the new project he was deliberately removed from the mailing list, another time someone misled him so that he could not give a prepared paper, someone else in turn blocked him from accessing the research data. All these cases are evidence of mobbing, the cause of which, he believes, is its origin. When one day he finds a dead rat on the fence gate of his house, he decides to act.

An excellent film by Visar Morina, which, like its protagonist, comes from Kosovo, is a story about the experience of emigration and the feelings that usually accompany it: loss, rejection, insecurity and social acceptance or alienation. Xhafer is the opposite of the typical emigrant: he achieved success and became an assimilated member of the new society. However, negative emotions constantly accompany him in everyday life. The filmmakers raise an important question about the extent to which successful integration depends on the conditions created by the social policy of a given country, and to what extent on the subjective feelings and sensibilities of the immigrant.