A Film on the Pavement: Unerasable!

Some films begin in a cinema and end in a cinema. Others spill out into the streets. Like life...

On the evening of 12 September, I watched Unerasable! again at Cinemaximiliaan’s “Cinema Trottoir”. As the film’s Executive Producer, I had been part of its entire journey; from the first idea to the final images, from the editing room to the moment it met its audience. But that evening, the film seemed to be saying something else as well.

Unerasable! tells the story of a filmmaker who fled repression in Vietnam in 2018. After living undocumented in Thailand for years, he eventually comes to Europe. But instead of the freedom he expected, he encounters another set of walls: bureaucracy, uncertainty, loneliness, and the never-ending feeling of having no place to call home.

The title of the film already says it all: Unerasable. Can a person’s name be erased? Their past? Their memory? Their identity?

In bureaucracy, a person can become nothing more than a number. In fact, most of us are tired of numbers. At school, on identity cards, in queues... But for a refugee, before they can tell their story, they first have to prove that they exist. And for that, they need a registration number. This is precisely where the film touches a nerve. It reminds us how easily a human being can be made to exist - and not exist - on paper.

But the film does not stop at telling the story of repression in Vietnam. The real question is this: when a person escapes from somewhere, do they really become free?

As the film follows someone fleeing an authoritarian system and arriving in the West, it does not take refuge in the simplistic story of “there was oppression there, and here there is freedom.” Instead, it confronts us with Europe’s own invisible borders. It makes us question the distance between the idea of freedom and actually being able to live it.

The director brings together archives, propaganda videos, images from the colonial past, and personal recordings. Starting from one person’s story, the film reveals mechanisms of repression that have existed in different forms throughout history. Yet it never turns into a political statement. This is where cinema finds its meaning. Because cinema, too, is a form of memory.

Isn’t recording an image also a way of saying, “You exist”?

You can hide a name. You can censor a story, or try to rewrite history. But once images have been recorded, erasing that memory is no longer so easy. Because cinema does not only show what happened; it also leaves a trace of what happened.

Cinema Trottoir invites us to follow that trace. Here, watching a film is not simply about looking at a screen. Its meaning comes from people coming together, sharing food, and listening to each other’s stories. And after the film, the conversations continue on the pavement outside.

Sometimes with a “This happened to me too”... Sometimes while humming Masum Değiliz (We Are Not Innocent)... Sometimes in the silence of someone who says nothing...

And the shadow within us quietly blends into the darkness of the night.

Stay with love.

FILM INFORMATION

Original Title: Unerasable!
Year: 2026
Running Time: 97 min.
Genre: Documentary / Experimental / Biography
Countries: Belgium / Thailand / Sweden
Original Language: Vietnamese
Production Company: Cinemaximiliaan, Brussels
World Premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2026 - Tiger Competition

CREDITS

Director: Socrates Saint-Wulfstan Drakos (pseudonym used for security reasons)
Written by: Socrates Saint-Wulfstan Drakos
Producers: Yüksel Çilingir, Annabelle Van Nieuwenhuyse
Executive Producer: Yüksel Çilingir
Director of Photography: Socrates Saint-Wulfstan Drakos
Editor: Socrates Saint-Wulfstan Drakos
Additional Editor: Artem Kocharyan
Sound Design: Socrates Saint-Wulfstan Drakos
Music: Ruth Mareen and Porter Ellerman (Ear To The Earth), and Pol Mareen
Animation: Hajar Mehrani
Illustrations: Timo Schmeits
Supported by: VAF (Flanders Audiovisual Fund), SABAM (Belgian Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers)