Review: ‘Fire at Sea,’ a documentary by Gianfranco Rosi

by Andrew Parker

For his stunning, subtle, and heart-wrenching documentary Fire at Sea (which won the coveted Golden Bear in Berlin earlier this year), Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi (Sacro GRA, El Sicario, Room 164) paints a picture of the modern refugee crisis from an empathetic angle and perspective unseen heretofore. It’s a stunning work of art, but an even more laudatory work of journalism. Fire at Sea is a documentary that could change the world if the right people see it, and all intelligent and engaged viewers who experience it will not be left unchanged. It’s not only the best documentary of the year, but one of the best films of the year.

Rosi documents life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a 20 square kilometer fishing community from a variety of perspectives. Lampedusa is noteworthy as a way-station for those seeking refuge and asylum from Africa and the Middle East. In the past twenty years, 400,000 migrants have tenuously and dangerously made their way to the island community on dilapidated, overcrowded sea vessels en route to what they hope is a better life. Of those hundreds of thousands, approximately 15,000 don’t arrive to Lampedusa alive.

Rosi spent time with members of the Coast Guard, often paying witness to tragic, sometimes horrible scenes of lifeless bodies being dragged off slowly sinking crafts either dead or dying from starvation. He also went inside some of the refugee camps to witness life both on the margins of society and in a state of limbo. These men, women, and children don’t know where they’re going, but they might find just as many European doors shut to them as open ones. It is a colony of desperate people, but the Italian Coast Guard does what they can with limited space and resources.

But those aren’t the primary subjects of Fire at Sea, with Rosi preferring to look at his subject from tangential sets of eyes, some as removed as a local radio DJ who reports the island news amid classical and jazz broadcasts (and who plays the track the film gets its title from). A lot of time is spent with Rosi observing Samuele, a nine year old boy forced to wear an eye patch thanks to a lazy eye, an image that becomes a near perfect metaphor for how the rest of the world has been approaching the largest migratory crisis in world history. He has no tangible connection or link to the migrants. He’s just a kid and island resident whose life just happens to be on the periphery of major world events. He has no true insights into the matter, and Rosi wisely never forces any, preferring to let all of his film’s subjects tell their own stories instead of conducting static interviews. The moments with Samuele are when Rosi’s cinematography is at its most alluring, capturing a beautiful dreariness to the island that makes it seem as hospitable as it does mysterious, almost alien.

fire-at-sea

The other major viewpoint comes from Dr. Pietro Bartolo, the only resident physician on the island. He’s also the community’s de facto coroner. Dr. Bartolo has seen the worst the migrant crisis has to offer, and shares his experiences openly and freely with Rosi and his audience. The relaxed offering up of a talk with a man who has witnessed the most tragic bits of humanity proves to be respectful. As an outsider to such a place, Rosi knows that there are no questions he could ask that would be relevant to the experience of those living amid this crisis. The images Dr. Bartolo offers up will shake viewers to their very core.

Fire at Sea could be seen by some as a political call to action, and while accurate, that reading strains a bit when placed in opposition to Rosi’s verite approach. More appropriately it can be seen as a subtle, but impassioned plea for empathy and understanding. The problems faced by those willing to pay what is for them large sums of money to risk their lives for a chance at a better life aren’t going away any time soon, and Rosi illustrates how people from outside the crisis should approach the situation with open hearts and open minds.

Fire at Sea opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox and at The Loft in Coburg, ON on Friday, October 21, 2016. It opens at Carbon Arc in Halifax on Saturday, October 22. It makes its way to Hyland Cinema in London, ON November 4, Cinecita in Vancouver on November 9, the Bytowne in Ottawa on November 10, The Vancity in Vancouver and Princess Cinema in Waterloo, ON on November 11, The Gorge Cinema in Elora, ON on November 18, the Bookshelf Cinema in Guelph, ON on November 24, The Vic in Victoria, BC on November 25, and Metro Cinema in Edmonton on December 9.

Check out the trailer for Fire at Sea:

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