«In the beginning is this persistent vision that refuses to be forgotten. December 1998, an African desert. The sound of an engine in the dark, approaching headlights, an indistinct mass of human shapes crowded onto the back of a pick-up that emerge from the night and then disappear back into it again. This image, normally so fleeting, has become an obsession. I went back to the site of this apparition to make this film. I had to find the people I’d lost in the ones I’d find, with me going backwards as they moved forwards. For five days, the time it takes for a citizen to become an undocumented immigrant, they confront surroundings that are first and foremost an adversary, not a landscape (…)» (Olivier Dury). Mirages screens at l’Alternativa on Saturday 14th November 2009.