Documenting the undocumented: testimony, attention and cinematic asylum in La Blessure

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nicolas Klotz and Élisabeth Perceval’s La Blessure (2004) bears witness to invisible state violence at the nation’s borders, in airport zones of exception, where asylum seekers are detained, injured, cared for and forced to return. This early visual representation of repressive care in the current border regime also cultivates forms of attention and regard for the asylum seeker’s face, voice and story. La Blessure complicates both humanitarian and documentary approaches to the undocumented. Jean-Luc Nancy’s observation that La Blessure evokes attention rather than compassion launches an examination of ‘cinematic asylum’ and frames of care in the film. Klotz and Perceval propose an undocumentarian approach to the undocumented, insofar as it is neither documentary in its genre nor humanitarian in its orientation. In its invocation of attention, the film’s forms wield political force while gesturing towards ethical and juridical reparation.