Mon, Apr 21, 2025 8:30 PM PT

Xoftex

Directed by Noaz Deshe  |  Germany  |  Fiction  |  99 min

The surreal and haunting limbo of asylum seekers’ daily lives reveals itself in Greece’s Xoftex camp when a young Syrian refugee filmmaker blurs reality and fiction by making a zombie movie
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Description

In this genre-blending, surreal portrait of life inside a notorious Greek refugee camp, Syrian and Palestinian asylum seekers await news of their fate. Trapped in bureaucratic limbo, young Nasser and his friends pass the time by making satirical sketches and planning a zombie horror film—only to realize that the reality of the camp mirrors a nightmare of its own. As tensions rise, the fragile wall between reality and fiction crumbles, exposing raw fear and frustration but also humor. Blending elements of social horror, comedy, and surrealism, Xoftex offers a deeply immersive look at the struggles of displaced people, drawing from real-life experiences. Featuring a cast of asylum seekers and inspired by theater workshops in refugee camps, the film balances moments of levity with the weight of unimaginable uncertainty as it captures the unsettling, dreamlike existence of those forced to flee their homes, only to land in purgatory. —Amir George

Biographies

Director Noaz Deshe

Bucharest, Romania, native Noaz Deshe is a cinematographer and composer as well as a director. He made his feature debut with White Shadow (Festival 2014), which won the Luigi De Laurentiis Best Debut Film award and the SFFILM Festival’s New Directors Prize Special Jury Recognition. He was nominated at Kamera Oko for his cinematography on Babak Jabali’s Radio Dreams (Festival 2016). Xoftex is his second feature.