COUNTRY: Poland
DIRECTOR: Agnieszka Holland

A Syrian family leaves the violence of their country behind, hoping to cross from Belarus into Poland and then onto the safe haven of Sweden. But, like so many lost souls, they end up caught in a political maelstrom, demonized by the Polish government, and press and used as pawns in an inhumane, deadly border game. This harrowing, urgent drama from the veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland constructs an intricate account of the contemporary global humanitarian crisis, expanding out to encompass the interconnected lives of security patrol officers, activist lawyers, and civilians who put themselves on the line for strangers. With the sobering and sometimes shocking Green Border, Holland reaffirms both her unyielding commitment to political filmmaking and the ability of immersive storytelling to illuminate the darkest corners of the world.

HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.

COUNTRY: Spain
DIRECTOR: Andrea Bagney

Andrea Bagney’s sparkling debut feature, largely shot in black and white in a stylistic nod to the French New Wave of the 1960s, is a romantic comedy with a difference. After living abroad for several years, Ramona and her boyfriend Nico return to Madrid where she hopes to restart her film acting career. Anxious on the evening before her first audition, Ramona walks the streets of Madrid where she encounters a charismatic older man named Bruno. They walk together and head to a bar where, over a few drinks, they talk about the state of the planet, climate change, and where the world is headed. Certainly fast friends, could they also be falling in love? It’s entirely possible, but what will really complicate the answer is Ramona’s discovery that Bruno is directing the very same film for which she’ll be auditioning.

HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.

COUNTRY: Italy
DIRECTORS: Orso Miyakawa and Peter Miyakawa

In their debut film, brothers Orso and Peter Miyakawa tell us an engaging tale about a small seaside town on the border between France and Italy. Born in Monaco and raised in Italy, the directors know this region and its class and culture differences well. The story focuses on Don, an oddball American tennis teacher who dreams of being a painter, Camilla, a college student who smuggles medicines, alcohol, and cigarettes across the border, and Brando her 14yo brother. Their lives take a turn when they meet Elvis, an undocumented immigrant trying to sneak across the border to catch up with his wife in Paris. Will the border stand against their friendship? A comedy, a drama, a human story.

HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.

COUNTRY: Netherlands
DIRECTOR: Kaweh Modiri

Iranian-Dutch director Kaweh Modiri hits it home with his second feature film. This thriller is an adaptation of his novel by the same name. Is it her? Scientist Haleh isn’t certain. Still suffering from the trauma of her daughter’s execution in Iran 37 years ago, Haleh has never actually seen Leyla, the woman who betrayed her daughter, but that voice... Opportunity arises for Haleh to avenge her daughter’s execution. How reliable are memories of traumatic events? And how sweet or useful is revenge? Modiri sows doubt in viewers while stubborn Haleh is convinced, she is right. Played by the acclaimed actress Jasmin Tabatabai, will Haleh find the truth and resolution? Mitra is based on Mordiri’s own life: his sister Mitra was executed before he was born.

HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.

COUNTRY: Poland
DIRECTOR: Agnieszka Holland

Acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland's latest documentary follows a family of Syrian refugees, an English teacher from Afghanistan, and a border guard, all converging on the Polish-Belarusian border amidst a humanitarian crisis. The film's release in Poland is said to have impacted the recent elections. This harrowing, urgent drama from the veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland constructs an intricate account of the contemporary global humanitarian crisis, expanding out to encompass the interconnected lives of security patrol officers, activist lawyers, and civilians who put themselves on the line for strangers. With the sobering and sometimes shocking Green Border, Holland reaffirms both her unyielding commitment to political filmmaking and the ability of immersive storytelling to illuminate the darkest corners of the world.

HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.

COUNTRY: German
DIRECTOR: Cristian Mungiu

The latest film by Cristian Mungiu is another fantastic example of the much-celebrated Romanian New Wave. In this drama set in a multi-ethnic Transylvanian village, Mungiu proves himself again a world class director able to entertain with humor that spares no one. Romania’s region of Transylvania is historically an ethnically diverse community but now it is hard to keep the village life going because everyone who can is working as migrants in Western Europe. When the local bakery hires migrant workers from Sri Lanka to stay open, the village is gripped by anti-migrant protest. R.M.N. is Romanian for M.R.I., the medical procedure that one of the figures needs. But R.M.N. clearly stands in for Romania itself as well as a diagnosis of social conditions all too familiar outside the Carpathians.

HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.

COUNTRY: France
DIRECTOR: Bruno Dumont

France de Meurs, played by the amazing Léa Seydoux, is a seemingly unflappable superstar TV journalist. She is a newscasting influencer loved by all but then her career, home life, and psychological stability are shaken after she carelessly drives into a young delivery man on a busy Paris Street. The film’s biting humor takes on the state of news and the state of the state right from her first over-the-top interaction with President Emanual Macron. Her name symbolizes it all; her first name, of course, stands in for France, the country, but in a play on words, her last name suggests both home and death. Is it reality TV, ego performance, or sincere reportage? What is the role of the established media in France? Dumont’s close-ups of beautiful France, the person, and the place invite us to do a long take.

HARRIS THEATER
809 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
https://trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/harris-theater

Faculty, Staff, and students of the University of Pittsburgh may attend for free by showing a Pitt University ID at the door.

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

Spring 2024 Global Distinction Drop-In Hours: Tuesdays at 3:30-4:30 pm.

EU ENLARGEMENT LECTURE SERIES: 20th Anniversary of the EU Enlargement

As part of our continued efforts to bring together experts with diverse perspectives to discuss contemporary issues facing Europe, the European Studies Center/European Union Center of Excellence (ESC/EUCE) along with the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) offers a new lecture series to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the EU Enlargement. This virtual lecture series will be held on the last Thursday of each month. 

2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the biggest enlargement of the European Union in its history. Ten countries, mainly former socialist Eastern European states, almost doubled the EU from 15 to 25 member states. May 1, 2004, was the triumphal return to the European Family for many. But for some, it initiated a process of disenchantment with the EU and the West.

Each month, the ESC/EUCE, together with REEES at the University of Pittsburgh, will focus our attention on a specific country or a group of countries in the EU by inviting experts and eyewitnesses to discuss the hopes and realities of the EU integration before and after expansion to address what hopes were fulfilled and what new hopes exist for the Union in the present.

Each session is recorded and later posted on the internet with suggested additional readings and further resources. Please check out our webpage for more details and mark the last Thursday of the month to attend this event.

Moderator: Randall Halle

Panelists:
Deunis Auers, University of Latvia

Daunis Auers is a Professor of European Studies and Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Latvia. He studied at the London School of Economics and defended his PhD at University College London. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley (2005-2006) and a Baltic-American Freedom Foundation Scholar at Wayne State University in Detroit (2014). His book on The Comparative Government and Politics of the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the 21st Century – was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. He is currently working on a monograph analyzing Nordic-Baltic integration and is a Fulbright program Visiting Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle during the fall and winter of 2023/2024.

Ivars Ijabs, PhD, Member of the European Parliament
Dr. Ijabs is a Member of the European Parliament, elected in 2019 from the electoral alliance “Attīstībai/Par!”. Before entering politics, he was a widely known political scientist, publicist, associated professor at the University of Latvia and a researcher at the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute of the University of Latvia. In the European Parliament, Dr. Ijabs is active in the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON), the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), and the Special Committee on Beating Cancer (BECA), representing the “Renew Europe” group. His priorities are with legislative proposals that would bring more EU funding for science, research, and innovation in Latvia.

Info Session: Washington, DC & Brussels
PS 1349 Transatlantic Governance and Policy - 3 Credits
MAY 5-23, 2024

Students will be introduced to the history and primary policy areas of the United States’
relationship with Europe while participating in site visits to think tanks and government
organizations in both Washington, DC and Brussels, Belgium. Site visits will include the US
Department of State, the European Parliament, the US Dept of Defense, and NATO.

For more information:
Tim Crawford, Study Abroad Office: TimCrawfford@pitt.edu
Steve Lund, European Studies Center: slund@pitt.edu

EU ENLARGEMENT LECTURE SERIES: 20th Anniversary of the EU Enlargement

As part of our continued efforts to bring together experts with diverse perspectives to discuss contemporary issues facing Europe, the European Studies Center/European Union Center of Excellence (ESC/EUCE) along with the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) offers a new lecture series to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the EU Enlargement. This virtual lecture series will be held on the last Thursday of each month. 

2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the biggest enlargement of the European Union in its history. Ten countries, mainly former socialist Eastern European states, almost doubled the EU from 15 to 25 member states. May 1, 2004, was the triumphal return to the European Family for many. But for some, it initiated a process of disenchantment with the EU and the West.

Each month, the ESC/EUCE, together with REEES at the University of Pittsburgh, will focus our attention on a specific country or a group of countries in the EU by inviting experts and eyewitnesses to discuss the hopes and realities of the EU integration before and after expansion to address what hopes were fulfilled and what new hopes exist for the Union in the present.

Each session is recorded and later posted on the internet with suggested additional readings and further resources. Please check out our webpage for more details and mark the last Thursday of the month to attend this event.

Moderator:
Gregor Thum, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh Department of History

Panelists:
Michal Vašečka, PhD, Bratislava Policy Institute. He is sociologist by background and focuses his interests on issues of ethnicity, race, antisemitism, and migration studies. As an Associate Professor he operates at the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA) since 2015, he is a program director of Bratislava Policy Institute. Since 2012 Michal Vašečka serves as a representative of Slovakia in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe. He operated at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno in 2002-2017 and at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University in 2006-2009.

Miloslav Bahna, PhD., Slovak Academy of Science. He is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, where he currently serves as the director. His research focuses on international migration, quantitative comparative sociology and quantitative survey methodology. He is a long term representative of Slovakia in the International Social Survey Programme and the CESSDA ERIC pan-European infrastructure. His first book focuses on post-2004 EU enlargement migration from Slovakia (VEDA, the publishing house of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, 2011).

Peter Haslinger is Director of the Herder Institute for Research on East Central Europe. He is a distinguished professor in history at the University of Giessen. His main areas of interest are security and conflict studies; minorities, multilingualism and intersectionality; nationalism, regionalism and historical memory; spatial turn and historical cartography. He has published widely on gaps in theory and model building that are related to theories of secularization and their spatial and cultural aspects. Peter Haslinger has been co-investigator in the LOEWE research cluster "Regions of Conflict in Eastern Europe" (2017-2021), the Jean Monnet Network SecurEU, as well as Principal Investigator in the collaborative research center (SFB) "Dynamics of security" (since 2014), where he was also the speaker of the concept group "Spaces of Security."

Agenda
Session I: New Trends in Security and Conflict Studies--Introductions, background, and statement of interests. Questions and discussions.

Session II: Critical Perspectives on Security and Conflict--Securitization Theory and/vs. Conflict studies. What is the added value of perspectives from humanities and cultural studies.

Session III: The War of Russia against Ukraine, as an example--Open Thesis: Putin's regime, history of Russian-Ukrainian relationship, novel character of the war (cyber aspects), the significance of war for Europe, and on the global level (China, Africa, grain supply and migration crisis). What can we learn from the war for security and conflict studies?

Session IV: Final Discussion and Wrap Up.

Facilitated by Randall Halle, Director, European Studies Center.

In the second installment of the Global Issues Through Literature Series (GILS), educators will convene to discuss The Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers.

This year's theme is: Marginalized Voices in Global Context: Centering Overlooked Narratives in Literature

This reading group for K-16 educators explores literary texts from a global perspective. Content specialists present the work and its context, and participants brainstorm innovative pedagogical practices for incorporating the text and its themes into the curriculum. Sessions this year will take place in a hybrid format, with virtual and in-person discussions taking place on Thursday evenings from 5-8 PM (EST). A copy of the book and 3 Act 48 credit hours are provided for each session.

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

Fall 2023 Global Distinction Drop-In Hours: Tuesdays at 3:30-4:30 pm, except on November 21.

Come meet international students, make friends, practice conversational English, and have fun together, during these weekly discussion groups coordinated by the English Language Institute. Feel free to bring your lunch :)

The award-winning Green & Blue explores the painful and humorous realities faced by the individuals who patrolled the border during the height of the conflict.

An officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary in his green uniform and Eddie from An Garda Síochána, resplendent in blue, communicate via crackly radios until an explosive incident forces them to meet across a field only farmers know the location of. Focusing on what it’s like to be hunted when you’re protecting a man-made line on the ground, the play looks at the societal and human cost of borders.

‘Green & Blue’ is based on real-life interviews with former serving officers. Winner of The Lustrum Award for Best Theatrical Moment at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe

The award-winning Green & Blue explores the painful and humorous realities faced by the individuals who patrolled the border during the height of the conflict.

An officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary in his green uniform and Eddie from An Garda Síochána, resplendent in blue, communicate via crackly radios until an explosive incident forces them to meet across a field only farmers know the location of. Focusing on what it’s like to be hunted when you’re protecting a man-made line on the ground, the play looks at the societal and human cost of borders.

‘Green & Blue’ is based on real-life interviews with former serving officers. Winner of The Lustrum Award for Best Theatrical Moment at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe

Are you looking to gain experience that will help prepare you for a globally-connected job market? Stop by Drop-In Hours to learn more about getting the Global Distinction added to your academic transcript, receiving special recognition at graduation, and standing out to prospective employers!

NOTE: Fall 2023 Global Distinction Drop-In Hours: Tuesdays at 3:30-4:30 pm, except on November 21. On November 7, Global Distinction Drop-in Hours will take place at 3-4 pm.