Film
Liquid Traces & Fire at the Sea + Q&A

Tue, 20.03.2018
6:30 PM - 21:00 Migration Museum at The Workshop

The Migration Museum Film Club in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut London will be screening Liquid Traces, a short film by Lorenzo Pezzani and Charles Heller, about the ‘left-to-die boat case’  followed by Gianfranco Rosi's prize-winning film Fire at Sea. Lorenzo Pezzani will attend the screening to talk and answer questions about his film.

Liquid Traces
Liquid Traces offers a ‘synthetic reconstruction’ of the events surrounding the ‘left-to-die boat’ case. In 2011, just over 70 passengers left the Libyan coast heading in the direction of the island of Lampedusa on board a small rubber boat. Despite being within the NATO maritime surveillance area – and despite several distress signals relaying their location, and numerous interactions, including at least one military helicopter visit and an encounter with a military ship – the boat was left to drift for 14 days, with all but 9 of the passengers losing their life.

Liquid Traces. 2014. 17 mins. In English. Directed by Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani. Part of Forensic Architecture, funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Fire at Sea
Fire at Sea won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival 2016. The film is a ‘stellar documentary’ (Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, 9 June 2016) that contrasts the lives of the Sicilians living on Lampedusa with the migrants for whom the island is their desperate destination. Immensely powerful and provocative, Fire at Sea has received rave reviews wherever it’s been shown. Writing in the Evening Standard on 10 June 2016, David Sexton said about it: ‘This delicate film about the present migrant crisis provides no commentary, no text or context – it just shows, with powerful effect. It is the most telling and memorable documentary I have seen for years.’

Fire at Sea (Fuocoamare), Italy / France 2016, 108 mins. Directed by Gianfranco Rosi. With English subtitles.

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