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Production

Stemal Entertainment


Germany

Links

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Fire at Sea

Summary

The first documentary to ever win the top award at the Berlin International Film Festival, FIRE AT SEA takes place in Lampedusa, a once peaceful Mediterranean island that has become a major entry point for African refugees into Europe. There, we meet Samuele, a 12-year-old boy who lives simply, climbing rocks by the shore and playing with his slingshot. Yet nearby we also witness thousands of men, women and children trying to survive the crossing from Africa in boats that are too small for such a journey¬. Filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi masterfully places these realities side by side, and in so doing creates a remarkable third narrative that jolts us into a new understanding of what is really happening in the Mediterranean today.
I went to Lampedusa for the first time in the fall of 2014 to explore the idea of shooting a 10-minute film to show at an international festival. The producers' idea was to make a short piece, an instant movie that would bring a different picture of Lampedusa to a lazy and complicit Europe whose sense of the burgeoning migration crisis was distorted and confused. This was true of me as well. For me, Lampedusa had long been just a snarl of voices and images generated by TV spots and shocking headlines about death, emergencies, invasions, and populist uprisings