WAGONS IN THE RAIN

The hostages of the First World War “meet” those of the Second World War, the displaced of the Yugoslav wars, and contemporary refugees within the same shifting geographical space of the Balkans. People move continuously across landscapes and borders, crossing barriers and checkpoints, in a persistent state of transit.
The film is built around three testimonial accounts. Ioannis Paschalias, born in a small town in Macedonia, was deported at the age of sixteen in 1916 to Požarevac, Serbia. Esther Cohen, born in Ioannina in western Greece, was deported at sixteen to Auschwitz. Crystyna Gil, born in a village in Poland, was displaced at the age of five in 1942, first to a Nazi ghetto and later to an extermination camp. Three childhood testimonies of displacement under different historical conditions.
Their stories intersect with the routes of displaced populations from later decades — the 1990s and the 2020s. People moving through the same region, driven by the same needs: survival, safety, the search for a place to live. The routes repeat, even as the historical context changes.
At the same time, roles shift. Soldiers of the First World War give way to those of the Second World War, then to the fighters of the Yugoslav conflicts, and, today, to border guards enforcing increasingly sealed frontiers. The context changes, but the mechanism remains.
Through testimonies, archival photographic, audio and film material, and contemporary reenactments, the film documents the experience of displacement and examines the fluidity of identities and borders in the wider Balkan region over the course of more than a century.