Migrants’ Pursuit: In Conversation with Thomas Sideris

Screened at the Kolkata People’s Film Festival (KPFF) 2025, Thomas Sideris’ Gas Station or The Pigeons of Lahore is a documentary about the Pakistani immigrant experience in Greece and the tragedy of the Pylos shipwreck, which was responsible for killing over 600 migrants and refugee seekers. The film captures the fear, loss and precarity that punctuate every stage of the migrants’ arduous journeys. Sideris draws parallels between his father's life as a shipyard worker and the lives of the Pakistani labourer protagonists, whom he refers to as 'pigeons'. Pigeons because they find themselves belonging to multiple homelands, carrying one space to another. The rise of right-wing political rhetoric in public discourse targeting migrants is juxtaposed against the history of migration that contributes to the culture and identity of a place. The film explores the idea of home for these pigeons and is, as Sideris says,"an attempt to bring to light people who are invisible and…victims of economic exploitation.” 

In this edited conversation, Sideris discusses his filmmaking process, the thread of workplace exploitation connecting his father and the migrants, the intersection of geopolitical conflict and migration, and the role of the Greek authorities in the Pylos tragedy. The deep emotional bond Sideris formed with the film’s subjects informs the humanistic approach to his creative process. Time spent with the protagonists going about their daily chores humanises those portrayed to be the other, underlining their resilience in the face of rampant discrimination. The exploitation faced by immigrants—at the hands of smuggler mafia and their employers—is further augmented by state apathy. Reduced to their occupation and the label of migrant, they are rendered invisible in society. In personalising the political, the film succeeds in reducing the distance between us—the audience—and its Pakistani migrant protagonists. 

Dr Thomas Sideris is a scholar of human geography who has covered conflict and migration extensively as an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker in areas such as Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Libya and Ukraine. He is also known for his films The Noose (2018), The Muddy River of Baasim (2020), Marabou (2022), The Pomegranates of Nagorno-Karabakh (2022), The Wedding in Afrin (2023) and The Return of Ivan (2025).

(Featured image: Still from Gas Station or The Pigeons Of Lahore [2024]. Image courtesy of the director.)

Recorded on 30 May 2025.

To learn more about the films screened at KPFF 2025, read Sahil Kureshi’s reflections on Sanjiv Shah’s Hun, Hunshi, Hunshilal (1992), Kshiraja’s essays on Sara Saini’s In the Wake of Remembering (2024) and Nishtha Jain’s Farming the Revolution (2024).