Mahmoud Khalil is free

No Human Is Illegal
Written By Richard C. Ledes

No Human Is Illegal - Athens Sanctuary

June 24th, 2025

I have sometimes doubted my choice of No Human Is Illegal as the title of my 2017 film that I made about undocumented immigrants—who, in the film, I consistently refer to as “refugees”—forced to remain on the island of Mytilene and not allowed to proceed further into Europe. 

The declaration “No human is illegal” is often attributed to Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born American writer, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. My own research has only been able to verify a time when he is reported second-hand to have said this. The reason I originally chose this title is because it was spray-painted on the encircling wall of Camp Moria, the largest and most notorious of the locked camps for immigrants when we were on the island. This declaration was finally covered over when the wall was painted with a fresh coat of white paint, just as we were leaving and just before Pope Francis was to arrive. 

For sure, the title is an oversimplification. Nevertheless, the college students who were volunteering to help me find an audience for the film were adamant that they wanted to keep the title. 

Earlier this week, when Mahmoud Khalil was released, he was asked what his message was to other immigrants in America. He answered by saying, "No Human Is Illegal." I felt a new rush of gratitude for the young people who had made me stick with this simple premise for its title.

My experience on Lesvos making that film with Florina Titz, Valentina Caniglia, Tammy Douglas and the other members of the crew marked me. I was fortunate to be working with three such extraordinary women filmmakers. They pushed for us to interview and hear the experiences of numerous women among the undocumented migrants. Thanks to these three women we were able to get interviews that otherwise we would never have been able to obtain. Each night over dinner we would process that day’s experiences and prepare for the next day.

The video installation Athens Sanctuary, opening in Athens June 28th at the Lofos Art Project and running through July at the gallery is my return to working in Greece. Athens Sanctuary is also, in a way, my return to our experiences on Lesvos and to my own working with the politics of these memories. With Athens Sanctuary I do this through Greek tragedies condensed into dance and music that are so integral to this form of drama.

Richard C. Ledes

Producer, Writer, Director

Producer, writer and director Richard C. Ledes was not named ”Richard” after his mother’s brother, who died a schizophrenic in a veterans psychiatric hospital after he either escaped or wandered off and was hit by a train. He was named after her father, a judge in Baltimore, who died of sadness a few months after his son, the schizophrenic, was hit by a train. Richard C. Ledes was not named after a schizophrenic.

Ledes’ film FRED WON’T MOVE OUT was named by the BFI (British Film Institute) as one of the 10 essential films of legendary actor Elliott Gould (MASH, THE LONG GOODBYE). Ledes’ film THE CALLER won Best NY Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival.

His first feature film A HOLE IN ONE, set in 1953, starring Michelle Williams, about a woman who wants a lobotomy, originated in a piece of performance art that Ledes based on the psychiatric records of his maternal uncle. He made A HOLE IN ONE after completing a doctorate in comparative literature at NYU. Much of his research for the film derived from the research he did for his dissertation; it was on the cultural traces of the rise of mental healthcare in the U.S. around treating veterans after WWII. During his research he volunteered at an outpatient center for severely mentally ill: assistant-directing their theater program and leading groups in which they read aloud the short stories of Poe, Melville and Hawthorne. This combination of a personal connection to a film’s theme with research into its broader significance remains an important dimension of his work.

His recently completed film ADIEU LACAN, starring David Patrick Kelly and Ismenia Mendes, is based on the play "Goodbye Doctor" and the novel "Lacan's Parrot" both by Betty Milan. ADIEU LACAN is the story of the struggle of a young woman to understand, through a psychoanalysis with the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, why her own path to motherhood has reached an unbearable impasse.

His upcoming film IKONOPHILE Z, “a light romantic comedy about the extinction of all life on earth,” is currently in post-production. Additionally he is in development on VIENNA 1913, based on a play by the same name written by the late renowned French psychoanalyst and playwright Alain Didier-Weill.

Ledes is also the only translator of William Burroughs into English (Burroughs did a series of interviews in France that were published in French; the original recordings were lost; for a collection of the work of Burroughs published by Semiotexte, Ledes translated the French translations back into English).

http://richardledes.com
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