Three days ago, Scenery announced the upcoming release of Gates of Europe.
I appear in this documentary.
Before it premieres on 5 August, I want to make one thing absolutely clear.
I completely dissociate myself from this documentary.
Scenery describes Gates of Europe as a documentary that “brings together different perspectives” and explores “the realities of border protection, migration and human rights.”
That is not the documentary I agreed to participate in.
In my opinion, Gates of Europe does not reveal the realities of Frontex.
It sanitises them.
It sanitises Europe’s largest and most controversial border agency by asking viewers to empathise with its leadership, its officers and its institutional dilemmas, while failing to give equivalent narrative weight to the documented realities that made Frontex controversial in the first place.
A whitewash does not deny wrongdoing.
It minimises it.
It sanitises it.
It asks audiences to empathise with those exercising power while marginalising the people who have documented, challenged and lived through its consequences.
That is why I believe Gates of Europe functions as a whitewash of Frontex.
When I agreed to participate almost three years ago, the project was presented to me as an open investigation into Frontex and European border policy. The written project description promised “an open investigation, not a preconceived opinion,” where opposing perspectives would be central and where the realities on the ground would carry equal narrative weight.
That is the documentary I agreed to participate in.
As the project developed, I became increasingly concerned that it was moving further and further away from those stated ambitions.
I did not spend months arguing over minor editorial decisions.
I spent months trying to stop this documentary from becoming a whitewash.
I repeatedly warned the filmmakers that the balance they had originally promised was disappearing. I identified what I believed were fundamental omissions, supplied extensive documentation, suggested concrete editorial solutions and urged them to return to the documentary they had originally presented to me.
I never asked them to make a different documentary.
I asked them to make the documentary they themselves had promised.
Those efforts failed.
In my opinion, this is a whitewash. Whether that happened deliberately or because the filmmakers lost sight of the project they originally presented to me, I cannot say.
What I can say is this:
I spent months trying to stop this documentary from becoming a whitewash of Frontex. When those efforts failed, I withdrew my participation and demanded to be removed. The producers chose to keep me in it anyway, creating the false impression that I support a documentary from which I had explicitly withdrawn.
I refuse to allow my appearance in this documentary to be used as evidence that I support it.
I do not.
I reject its editorial direction.
I reject the picture it ultimately paints of Frontex.
I reject any suggestion that my participation should be interpreted as an endorsement.
In my opinion, Gates of Europe is not an open investigation. It is a whitewash.
So if you watch Gates of Europe and see me on your screen, understand this:
My appearance is not an endorsement.
It is not support.
It is not approval.
It is there despite months of documented objections, months spent trying to prevent this documentary from becoming what I believe is a whitewash of Frontex, and my explicit request to be removed.
I refuse to allow my appearance in this documentary to be used to legitimise a documentary from which I explicitly withdrew my support.