Montreal Gazette

Coen brothers, George Clooney team up in Suburbicon

New documentar­y follows refugees’ flight from oppression

- CHRIS KNIGHT

HUMAN FLOW ★ ★ ★ ★ out of 5 Cast: A planet of refugees Director: Ai Weiwei

D ur at ion:2h20m A frightenin­g take-away from Human Flow, Ai Weiwei’s worldspann­ing documentar­y overview of the refugee crisis: In 1989 there were 11 national border fences, presumably including the one about to come down in East Germany. There are now about 70, with more under constructi­on.

Human Flow is not heavy on talking heads or factoids, though it includes a few of each. Onscreen writing ranges from third-century BC Buddhist scripture to 20th-century poetry and 21st-century headlines.

But mostly, it follows the Chinese artist and activist as he visits refugees, on the move and in camps, throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

But the sometimes casual constructi­on of the film does not detract from the stories of those who must flee war, starvation or persecutio­n in their homelands. We witness a huge crowd trudging across Greece toward the Macedonian border, now blocked by a wall that started going up in 2015. Italians rescue migrants from overflowin­g boats in the Mediterran­ean.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon number more than a million — this in a nation of only six million people. In Kenya, a quarter of a million people, mostly Somalis fleeing civil war, live in the squalid Dadaab refugee camp. Germany hosts about 7,000 refugees in a former airport, the Nazi-era Tempelhof, its massive hangers full of tiny apartments that look like office cubicles, with walls but no ceilings.

The meandering nature of the film is problemati­c. It might have been interestin­g to spend a little more time with one group of people and see where they end up. But this is meant to be a kind of global snapshot — albeit a 140-minute one — with brief touchdowns at the U.S.-Mexico border, Afghanista­n and Turkey.

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 ?? BULENT KILIC/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES FILES ?? A Syrian Kurdish woman and her children cross into Turkey. In Human Flow, Ai Weiwei visits refugees throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
BULENT KILIC/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES FILES A Syrian Kurdish woman and her children cross into Turkey. In Human Flow, Ai Weiwei visits refugees throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

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