WATCH: Short thriller ‘Papers Please’ illustrates immigration dilemmas

A ten-minute short film based on award-winning border control game “Papers Please” has been released, taking place at the junction between the fictional Eastern Bloc countries of Arstotzka and Grestin.

Paperwork, passports, convoluted permits and immigration quotas stack up against personal involvements — family ties, starvation, poverty and more.

In “Papers Please”, the devotion to detail and adherence to the law rub up against some of the
circumstances that could drive a person to leave everything behind and emigrate to a foreign country.

Igor Savochkin, who has appeared in modern-day vampire movie “Night Watch” and Golden Globe winner “Leviathan”, stars as the passport inspector, immersed in the minutae of above-board border crossings.

Also involved is Mikhail Panyukov of Golden Eagle nominated wartime TV series “The Apostle”.

“Papers, Please: The Short Film” is the fourth such short directed by Nikita Ordynskiy, and comes with the blessing of Lucas Pope, the unusual and highly praised video game that inspired it.

Debuting in 2013 on PC and Mac, with an iOS editon for iPad and a Linux version released the following year, “Papers, Please: A Dystopian Document Thriller” has players sift through applications for border passage against an undulating landscape of administrative regulations, rule bending and breaking spurred by a spectrum of moral motivations, political resistance movements and the passport inspector’s own personal and financial obligations.

It won three accolades at the 2014 Independent Games Festival Awards, including the overall Seumas McNally Grand Prize, two more at the Game Developers Choice Awards later that same evening, and a BAFTA award. JB

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