Eden Is West

Eden Is West (French: Eden à l'ouest) 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 also 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.