Papers, Please
A Provocative Short Film
In 1982, the country of Arstotzka is easing into a tentative peace with its neighbor, Kolechia. After six long years of war, the open conflict is over, but tensions between the two nations have not eased, especially from the point of view of a low-level government employee working at a border security checkpoint.
Such is the setup for Papers, Please: The Short Film, from directors Liliya Tkach and Nikita Ordynskiy, two Russian filmmakers from Kinodom Productions.
Igor Savochkin (Night Watch) stars as a lowly beaucrat charged with deciding who is permitted into Arstotzka, and who is forced to stay in Kolechia. Without giving anything away, Papers, Please is an exploration of empathy and bureaucracy, of the coldness of reducing people to statistics, as well as the dangers of taking pity on strangers. It’s not an indictment of empathy, but a reminder that things like immigration aren’t as simple as they seem, especially in a fictional 1980s Eastern Bloc country.
Papers Please: The Short Film is available to view on YouTube and Steam
