Fire at Sea an intriguing take on refugee crisis
at Sea (Fuocoammarre) 1/2 (out of 4) Documentary directed by Gianfranco Rosi. 108 minutes. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. PG
Closer to Africa than Sicily, the Italian island of Lampedusa has long played a key role in the ongoing refugee crisis besetting Europe and the Mediterranean region.
In fact, as filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi notes at the outset, the tiny windswept island has acted as a critical base of operations for the Italian navy and provided temporary refuge to more than 400,000 people from Africa and the war-torn Middle East for 20 years.
But Rosi takes a very different storytelling tack in the documentary Fire at Sea, winner of this year’s Golden Bear prize at the Berlin Film Festival, juxtaposing the ordinary lives of Lampedusa’s citizens with those desperate enough to risk their lives on unsafe, overloaded crafts in the hope of a better life.
It’s an intriguing and instructive approach.
Samuele, a 12-year-old boy who likes playing with slingshots and hanging out with his pal, Mattias, becomes a central character of sorts. There’s Aunt Maria, who regularly calls up the local radio disc jockey with song requests, the solitary diver armed with a fishing spear, the doctor who has seen too far too much death and others.
We also catch glimpses into the lives of the rescued. In hip-hop cadence, a young Nigerian speaks of the horrific journey across Africa that brought him to the shores of the Mediterranean.
And while the Italian rescuers act with professionalism and efficiency, there is always a sense of two worlds that meet tangentially, but never interact. With superb cinematography throughout, Rosi proves himself to be a sublimely unconventional storyteller.