The lives of others

AS a refugee drama, Quiet Life begins where the Cannes Un Certain Regard film, The Story of Souleymane, endswith the denial of asylum by the country that the films' protagonists have migrated to, in search of a safe, secure, and better life.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

While The Story of Souleymane focuses on the lead-up to this shattering moment, Quiet Life goes on to explore the cold, galling, thoughtless and inhuman dismissal and its alarming consequences. Most significantly it brings to light the mysterious and largely unfamiliar Resignation Syndrome that refugee children often get afflicted with. The fear of violence, repression, and indigence back home and uncertainty about the future in a new country makes them shut down and dissociate from reality to go into a comatose state. A defence mechanism of sorts to cope with the unbearable. Greek filmmaker Alexandros Avranas presents the phenomenon in Quiet Life in a contemporary, dystopian, almost Sleeping Beauty-like mode.