Author's Documentary Films About Migrants in Europe: Themes and Characters (on the Example of the Films in 2015-2017)

The research is devoted to studying of themes and characters in author’s documentary films about migrants in Europe (on the examples of the films in 2015-2017). The research was conducted based on the documentary films presenting Europe’s Migration Crisis from international documentary festivals or at film festivals in the category of «documentary films». The goal of the project was to identify ways of transmitting the image of migrants in the documentary films about the Europe’s Migration Crisis and to spot the difference between documentaries’ images and the mass cultural, media, and political stereotypes about migrants. It is going to be achieved by both theoretical and empirical methods: secondary-data analysis, typology, comparative analysis, discourse analysis and work with materials. To achieve the goal, the tasks were to determin the development of the topic of migrants in the media and in public discourse, to identify the main stereotypes, the characteristics of the author's documentary films about migrants in 2015-2017, the themes, types of heroes, their images and means and methods of artistic expressiveness used in the films in question, as well as the definition of the transformation of media stereotypes in films. In the results based on the hypothesis it is proven that directors of documentary films represent the situation of migrants from a democratic and humanistic point of view. Directors do not follow stereotypes imposed by media and right-wing populist politicians that migrants are enemies and a huge problem for European countries.