Ghita Skali

The Invaders

The Invaders by Ghita Skali is a tale that bites you. This short film, staged in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a broader context of increasingly xenophobic and racist policies in western countries, uses comedy to flip the stigma. First, Skali sets the scene: Once upon a time, a virus came and changed the plan. A flight map is turned upside down, excerpts from television news and papers are tricked and Europeans are now the unwanted intruders in the countries of the Global South. All is familiar, but everything is different. Then, enters the main character, Cheikha Houria, a popular singer and dancer, whose daily life is shaken up when, one night, she witnesses the arrival of the invaders, some weird creatures who arrived from far away to colonise the world in their spaceship in the shape of President brand camembert cheese. Inspired by the remake of the 1970s eponymous sketch by the French humorists Les inconnus that turns the original aliens into migrants, Skali’s film features the other invaders, who are never named as such: the westerners who set up the empires that, under other names, are still very alive today. Walking a thin line between realness and absurdity, fact and fiction, The Invaders turns humour and irony into a weapon, addressing the violence of colonial history and extreme right discourses around otherness and migration.