Film: "Fire at Sea"
This Oscar-nominated doc contrasts the lives of the desperate thousands landing on a small Sicilian island with the everyday existence of the locals.
Gianfranco Rosi’s intensely absorbing, beautiful and mysterious documentary observes Europe’s migrant crisis from the vantage point of a small Sicilian island where thousands of refugees, fleeing war and poverty, have landed in recent decades. Rosi shows the harrowing work of rescue operations but devotes most of the film to the daily rhythms of Lampedusa as seen through the eyes of a doctor who treats casualties and performs autopsies, and a feisty but anxious pre-teen from a family of fishermen for whom it is simply a peripheral fact of life. With its emphasis on the quotidian, this Oscar nominee for Best Documentary reclaims an ongoing tragedy from the abstract sensationalism of media headlines. D: Gianfranco Rosi, Italy, subtitled, 1h 53m
Part of the Dartmouth Film Society series Reel Change and programmed in conjunction with the course Migration Stories (FS 47)
