Refugee crisis on filmmakers’ mind
Mexican Oscar-winner Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has brought a harrowing virtual reality experience set on the US-Mexican border to the Cannes film festival, where the plight of the world’s migrants is in the spotlight.
The six-minute immersive experience is called Carne y arena (Flesh and Sand).
As sirens wail, each live participant -- barefoot in sand and wearing VR goggles -experiences the scene alone, joined only by a small band of virtual people hoping to reach America -- men, women, children.
Carne y arena is screening at an airport just outside Cannes but in the town, the refugee issue is also inescapable.
Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo is in the running for this year’s Palme d’Or top prize with Jupiter’s Moon. The supernatural thriller tells the story of Syrian refugee Aryan who, after being shot several times by a policeman at the border, can levitate at will. When a terror plot emerges, Aryan gets caught up in a police dragnet as authorities assume the culprits must be migrants.
Also screening in Cannes is a passion project by veteran British actress Vanessa Redgrave, a long-time activist making her directorial debut at 80. Her documentary Sea Sorrow features shots of migrants living in Italy and the now-dismantled Jungle camp in Calais, France, interspersed with readings about the human plight of those fleeing misery..