GSFF: Bab Sebta

Randa Maroufi's short movie Bab Sebta, which translates to ‘the door of Ceuta’, brings the viewer to a land that could easily not even be real, judging by the surroundings and black chalk colour all around. We’re actually in Ceuta, a Spanish turf on Moroccan soil, where we find thousands of people working at the border trying to deal with the intense trafficking of manufactured goods, sold at discounted prices. 

Being it forbidden to take any type of photo at the border, Maroufi retraces the whole scenario from memory, thanks to the many trips she took during the years when her father was working as a custom inspector. 

The two different points of view, a zenith and a front one, the chalky black background filled with a myriad of different people, the mechanical sounds whirring in the background, immediately make the viewer think of an industrial assembly line. 

The absence of walls or doors à la Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2003) and the presence of drawings and signage on the floor almost trick the viewer into thinking that the place doesn’t even exist, or could it be a carefully coordinated theater hall maybe? The only given clue that Ceuta actually exists on the map is the helicopter view in the very end of the short, where we can have a look at the bigger picture, which turns out to be a Google maps view, still playing around with the concept of artificial world versus real world. 

Thanks to the brilliant use of camera shifts between the ground and the sky, we get to experience the overall custom border like the machine it's meant to be, constantly working and never resting, but we also get a closer and more intimate look at the hundreds of human beings that go through the process every day. Voices overlapping with the mechanical whirring, hands gestures, colorful dresses and packages carefully brushing over a black background and kids running around a car untroubled all create a perfect juxtaposition with the machinery monster that the border actually presents itself to be. 

With the assembly of a long series of one-shots, Bab Sebta creates a virtually new world, one that exists in Maroufi’s decades long memories, making it hard for an untrained eye to gauge the actual reality of it. 

Human fragility is the aspect that delicately transpires through a repetitive series of very long and quiet shots: actions seem almost silent, smugglers are moving with agility repeating a series of movements done a thousand times before. Nonetheless the constant rhythmic chatter and automatic background noises create a turbulence during the entire short, reminding the viewer about the bureaucratic aspect of the border, almost trying to get rid of the individuality of each person, creating a subtle contrast between the two. 

Bab Sebta is a fragile and theatrical struggle for freedom happening everywhere in the world and nowhere simultaneously.