Fire at Sea
Appreciated the unforced transitions between all the different lives of Lampedusa a lot more this time. This feels like a documentary that doesn’t want to compromise the reality it captures with any sort of overt direction or supposedly comprehensive narrative from the filmmaker - which fits the place it portrays. There’s no way to really connect the quiet daily life of this small Italian community with the horrific experience that immigrants arriving on drowning boats go through. 306
These are simply drastically different situations. So why force a connection? The tragedy of FIRE AT SEA is that many completely different destinies can be set in the same place, and still be worlds apart, with only overwhelmed doctors in between making that tenuous link. In that absurdly awful context, the doctor’s message that any real human being should help these refugees only resonates more and more desperately. 494