Fire at Sea
Sponsored by the Department of Francophone and Italian Studies, Cinema Studies, and the Center for the Arts and Humanities at Colby College.
Situated 150 miles south of Sicily, Lampedusa hit headlines as the first port of call for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern refugees hoping to make a new life in Europe. After spending months living on the island and engaging with its inhabitants, director Gianfranco Rosi accumulated an incredible array of footage, portraying the history, culture and daily lives of the islanders. Focusing on 12-year-old Samuele as he explores the land and attempts to gain mastery of the sea, the film slowly builds a breathtakingly naturalistic portrait of the Lampedusan people, the refugees, and the events that surround them. The result is a lyrical, poetic, and searingly powerful documentary that casts neither judgement nor aspersions, but simply shows the world—to utterly devastating effect.
Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival and nominated for the 2017 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Rosi’s deeply moving portrait of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa and the humanitarian crisis occurring in the seas around it "peels away any pretense of resolution to the migrant crisis. Instead, Fire at Sea constructs a history that finds stability in its certainty that empathy, as the highest form of human connection, must anchor any constructive response to displaced refugees."—Clayton Dillard, Slant Magazine.
Be sure to stay after the film to participate in an open discussion!
In English and in Italian with English subtitles.
WATCH TRAILER >
Situated 150 miles south of Sicily, Lampedusa hit headlines as the first port of call for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern refugees hoping to make a new life in Europe. After spending months living on the island and engaging with its inhabitants, director Gianfranco Rosi accumulated an incredible array of footage, portraying the history, culture and daily lives of the islanders. Focusing on 12-year-old Samuele as he explores the land and attempts to gain mastery of the sea, the film slowly builds a breathtakingly naturalistic portrait of the Lampedusan people, the refugees, and the events that surround them. The result is a lyrical, poetic, and searingly powerful documentary that casts neither judgement nor aspersions, but simply shows the world—to utterly devastating effect.
Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival and nominated for the 2017 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Rosi’s deeply moving portrait of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa and the humanitarian crisis occurring in the seas around it "peels away any pretense of resolution to the migrant crisis. Instead, Fire at Sea constructs a history that finds stability in its certainty that empathy, as the highest form of human connection, must anchor any constructive response to displaced refugees."—Clayton Dillard, Slant Magazine.
Be sure to stay after the film to participate in an open discussion!
In English and in Italian with English subtitles.
WATCH TRAILER >
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