Wars erupt around the world. They devastate, destroy and lay waste. Often they are the result of centuries of hatred between ethnic groups or nations. But just as often, two peoples, two minorities whose motherlands face each other, whose countries claim to be enemies, live in the same village. However, survival for one group means amputating the other’s territory. A national holiday over here is a day of mourning over there, and coexistence is thought of as a sign of weakness or even as betrayal of the rest of their community.

There are such villages, in Kosovo, in Cyprus, in Israel – places where daily life matters more than high-level politics and where, instead of hating each other, people choose to learn, to discover and finally to accept to continue living together.

It’s the interconnected stories of these villages that we want to tell here, through the experience of their inhabitants.

Questions remain. What history will you teach to the village’s children? How will you celebrate national independence when you’re a Serb resident of the only mixed village in Kosovo? How can you defend diversity when Serbia won’t recognise Kosovo as an independent state? How can you discuss the reunification of Cyprus in a village that was never divided? How will you approach the Other when his country’s army occupies your home? How can you speak of a common future for Israelis and Palestinians when bloody clashes are a daily occurrence? How do you confront accusations of treason?

The easy way out would be for everyone to choose a side. But the inhabitants of these three villages in Kovoso, Cyprus and Israel have deliberately made the choice to live together, each village in its own way. To explore, without any taboos, what can keep them united without forgetting what keeps them apart, and to do it together. To stand firm, as difficult as it may be, against the forces pushing them towards separation.

It is this approach to daily life, this deliberate choice, this unique experience of three villages that have never heard of each other that we want to tell, for three reasons:

1. To give a voice to this different breed of activists,
2. To publicise their experience, which, while different, is in some ways replicated in different countries and under different circumstances,
3. To prove that, in times when extremism seems to be gaining ground everywhere, it remains possible to live together and respect each other, even when you are, theoretically, enemies.

To Angelique Kourounis and Thomas Iacobi, belonging to an ethnic minority and loyalty to the “motherland” are deeply personal issues. These are questions that haunted their childhood and often poisoned their relationships with others.

Angélique was born in France to Greek parents and was brought up in the traditional Greek environment typical of the conservative Diaspora. Thomas is Transylvanian, i.e. a member of the German minority in Romania; he grew up in Cluj, a city also known under its German name, Klausenburg, in a German-speaking milieu of middle-class intellectuals under Ceausescu’s regime – in the city where his father sought refuge to go to university, where, despite being a Romanian citizen, he could hide his German origins so as to avoid persecution as a supporter of Hitler.

The issues they faced were sometimes different, as Angelique belongs to a migrant community while Thomas hails from a minority that was established for centuries, but the commonalities were obvious. Both always had to take a stand. Are you Greek or French, German or Romanian? Do you prefer Greece or France, Romania or Germany? What if there’s a war between Romania and Germany? Who will you side with? This last question was particularly brutal for Thomas’s mother, an ethnic German from Transylvania who paid a heavy price for her double belonging: three years in Stalin’s labour camps, even though she had never been a Nazi, even though she’d hidden Resistance pilots during the war. Being German, she had to pay for Hitler’s war in the Romanians’ view. She was never given a choice or even the benefit of the doubt.

As children, Angélique and Thomas didn’t know how to answer these questions. As adults, they chose to make documentaries about them, to go and meet others who, like them, had no answers to give – until they found three mixed villages in Cyprus, Kosovo and Israel. There, they found people who deliberately chose not to answer, but to act and propose a different way of life.

Now, Angelique and Thomas wish to tell the interconnected stories of these activists of a different kind. They are often isolated, but each group’s unique experience repeats itself in different countries, under conditions that are very different. While the far right, racism and even Nazism are gaining ground across the world, these three villages prove that living together and respecting each other is possible, even when people are expected to be enemies.

“Cyprus: Is Reconciliation Possible?” (8’, 2017, RTSR) – Currently submitted to the Paris short film festival Courts Devant (2017)

“Golden Dawn, A Personal Affair” (90’, 2016, ARTE, OmniaTV) – Averroes Junior Award winner in the Primed festival 2016 (Marseilles), Jury Special Award in LAGAFF (Los Angeles), official selection of the festivals of Thessaloniki, Kalamata, Los Angeles, Toronto, Barcelona, London, Lyon, Marseilles, Cannes, Avanca, Berlin, Prague, Brussels, Tirana

“Mount Athos, All-Male Silence” (8’, 2016, RTSR) – Currently submitted to the Paris short film festival Courts Devant (2017)

“Newe Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam: A School Like No Other” (8’, 2015, RTSR, Faut Pas Croire) – Selected for a series of screenings in French schools to promote coexistence since 2015

“Greece: Unrelenting Austerity” (8’, 2015, RTSR, TTC)

“Sharia Law: It’s in Europe too” (8’, 2015, RTSR, Faut Pas Croire)

“Transylvania: Saxon Nostalgia” (8’, 2015)

“Golden Dawn’s Promises” (26’, 2014, Yemaya/Arte Reportages)

“Cyprus: Saving Churches and Mosques to Promote Peace” ­(8’, 2014, RTSR)

“Golden Dawn and the Orthodox Church”(8’, 2013, RTSR) – Official selection of the London Greek Film Festival (2014)

“Albania: Using the Scriptures against Kanun” (8’, 2013, RTSR) 

“Greece: A New Frontier” (29’, 2012, Envoyé Spécial, Capa/France 2)

“The Path of the Roma” (14’, 2010, CBC, Une heure sur terre)

“Cyprus: Visa to a Nightmare” (10’, 2008, EPN Productions/Capa, Effet Papillon) – Official selection of the Medieterranean Film Festival in Marseilles and the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival

“Greece: Solidarity, Patching Things Up” (9’, 2013, Capa/Canal+) – Finalist in the London Greek Film Festival

“Greece: The Great Fire Sale” (­9’, 2013, Capa/Canal+, Effet Papillon)

“The Lagarde List” (10’, 2012, RTSR, Mise au Point, collaboration with Anastasios Liaros)

“Greece/Germany: Two Lives, Two Families” (15’, 2012, RTSR, Toutes Taxes Comprises)

“Greece: Catch Me If You Can” (9’, 2012, Capa/Canal+, Effet Papillon)

“Greece: Going Downhill” (26’, 2011, Capa/France 2, Envoyé Spécial, collaboration with Philippe Laigner and Donatien Lemaître) – Achieved the show’s record audience

“Greece: The Issue of Domestic Terrorism” (9’, 2011, Capa/Canal+, Effet Papillon)

“Radiation Exposure in Kazakhstan” (33’, 2010, Capa/France 2) – Free Speech Award in the Journées du grand reportage, Marseilles (2011), official selection of the Figra 2011, the Environmental Film Festival in Bourges (2011), the Ilaria Alpi Festival, the Scoop d’Angers (2011)

“Kazakhstan: The Atomic Effect” (10 min, 2009, Capa/Canal+) – International Media Award in the Planète Manche Festival (2009)

“Albania: Blood Debt” (26 min, 2008, Capa/France 2, Envoyé Spécial)

“17N: Terrorism, The Other Face of Greece” (52 min, 2004, Phares et Balises, collaboration with Chantal Lasbath)

Co-author of “Trouble on the Far-Right” (original publication in English, Transcrit, 2016)

Co-author of “Faces of the Crisis” (La Libella, 2015)

“Greece wounds me” (article published in Le Monde, 19 June 2013) – Official selection of the Assises du journalisme, Metz 2013