Imagining Emanuel Trailer (2011)

Could you prove the facts of your life? Without any identification or a scrap of tangible evidence, refugee claimant Emanuel can’t convince anyone of who he really is. Despite his detailed account of stowing away in the rudder of a massive cargo ship bound for Norway, officials there simply don’t buy his hard luck story of life back in Liberia. Now at the centre of an embarrassing bureaucratic scandal, he exists in complete limbo—a stateless stranger refused by multiple countries and confined to a deportation facility. Filmmaker Thomas Østbye skillfully composes the man’s perplexing condition, contrasting footage of his everyday activities with portrait-like shots that frame him, not as a person, but as society perceives him: an object for examination. Rashomon meets real life in this fascinating investigation of what constitutes truth and identity.