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Director Tadhg O’Sullivan recently tweeted a still from his new film The Great Wall with two quotes printed in opposite corners. The first is from Franz Kafka, author of the 1917 short story “The Building of the Great Wall of China”, on which this film-essay is based. The second is from David Cameron, referring to refugees seeking asylum in Europe as “…a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean…”.

O’Sullivan shows the now familiar images of people clambering over rows of high fences, but his focus is the borders and barriers themselves, and the power structures which maintain them. The film quickly moves from security footage of migrants to the many European locations O’Sullivan travelled to with his frequent collaborator, Feargal Ward. There are long, panoramic shots of the physical barriers and the security forces migrants are met with. However, the film soon attempts to capture the less visible barriers at work. With images of city police forces, financial institutions and political demonstrations, O’Sullivan presents a European continent which actively discourages the free movement of people- far from the founding ideals of the EU.

The only speech throughout is a reading – in the original German – of Kafka’s short story. The English subtitles make up a new translation of the text from O’Sullivan and Nicola Creighton. It is told from the perspective of a labourer who travels to help construct The Great Wall of China, built along the country’s northern border. In O’Sullivan’s retelling of Kafka’s story, the wall is built to keep out the ‘swarms’ from the south, not the northern armies as it is in the original. This gives the film a contemporary relevance, and underlines the arbitrary nature of segregating people based on the accident of their geography. O’Sullivan asks us why we repel refugees seeking asylum in 2015 with the same tools of division and dehumanisation used thousands of years ago to keep out invading armies.

Indeed, dehumanisation is a theme which Kafka considers too. The Imperial capital of China justifies the need for a wall by inflating the barbarity of the invaders: they have “straining eyes, which seem to be squinting for someone to seize, whom their jaws will crush and rip to pieces”. The labourer argues that this misrepresents people they do not know and will never meet. He suggests that the highest political power is very willing to issue orders, but seem absent from the reality he knows. By putting images of modern day Europe alongside these arguments, O’Sullivan makes the criticism readily transferable.

The other quote from O’Sullivan’s tweet is taken directly from Kafka’s story: “the structure… can be destroyed by nomads… who move with the dizzying swiftness of locusts”. Elsewhere in the story, Kafka writes that “human nature, which is fundamentally careless and by nature like the whirling dust, endures no restraint. If it restricts itself, it will soon begin to shake the restraints madly and tear up walls, chains, and even itself”.This is where O’Sullivan parts ways with Kafka. He filmed throughout Europe, from the city of London to the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the African continent, the adopted centre to the peripheries, and yet a melodic voice-over with long shots of militarised coastlines and clinical skyscrapers all bring about a consistently languid and thoughtful mood. O’Sullivan’s skill is his restraint; there is no tearing up of walls- and this is surprising considering the emotive subject matter.

In a scene where a migrant sits precariously on the wall of balcony reading a book, O’Sullivan’s nomads offer contemplation where Kafka’s bring haste. Perhaps in a polarised and often uninformed debate surrounding the European migrant crisis, some sobriety is welcome.

The Great Wall is currently showing at the IFI.