Eden Is West

Eden Is West is a 2009 film by Greek-French director Costa-Gavras about an illegal immigrant called Elias who tries to get to Paris. The original title in Greek is "Paradissos sti Dysi" ("Paradise in West") and since it is a Greek-French production, the original French title is "Eden à l'ouest'. The nationality of the central hero is not disclosed because Gavras wants to make a point about the odysseys of the illegal immigrants of any nationality, since he himself was an immigrant 50 years ago in France, before he became a well known director. His hero seems to tolerate the sea, the cold of snowy mountains and the hunger, the rapists and robbers he meets, the cops that are after him all the time, the racists who push him aside, the fellow immigrants who steal his clothes and in the best case the women who see him as a lover they could also take advantage of. His only comfort is his dream of Paris and, in the complexity of human condition, the good within the evil and vice versa. Plot Elias (Riccardo Scamarcio) is an immigrant in his twenties who tries to get to Europe by a boat along with other illegal immigrants. When the boat is near the Greek shores and they hope they will soon disembark, a marine patrol approaches and Elias jumps into the sea in order to avoid arrest. So do the other people in the boat. He wakes up next morning in a shore with nudists, which is not so bad after all, since he has lost some of his clothes while he was swimming for quite a few hours. He pretends to be a nudist himself, steals some clothes and he pretends he is an employee of the hotel "Eden Club-Paradise". Some residents consider him to be an employee and some others a client like themselves. He meets a magician (Ulrich Tukur) who hires him for a few tricks and since Elias is fairly good, Nick Nickelby, as the magician is called in the movie, tells him "if you find yourself in Paris, come and find me". Elias considers it an invitation and a great opportunity. Going to Paris becomes an obsession. In the meantime nasty things happen to him: he is raped by the manager of the hotel and in another occasion he is obliged to clean a toilet with his hands because a tenant considers him to be a plumber. He also happens to witness the arrest of a friend of his, an illegal immigrant, who is discovered hiding near the hotel.