This brief experimental documentary about the migration crisis comes from Italian artists and film-makers Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo and is a collage of unused footage from video pieces they have made together over the past 15 years. It’s a film with interesting things to say about the fortressing of Europe during that time,and the hardening of policies against migrants and asylum seekers. But I confess to finding it hard going and slightly frustrating. By the end I wondered if it might not have worked better as a gallery installation alongside the duo’s earlier works.
It opens in 2006, at night on Lampedusa, the tiny Sicilian island where thousands fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East arrive on dinghies and small boats every year. We’re in a car parked on a busy dock and a man, heard not seen, hums a song, trying to remember words in Arabic. This is Abdelhamid, who is Tunisian and employed as a seasonal worker at a hotel on the island. He’s also an interpreter for the film-makers.
