20 Best Foreign Movies Of 2016
16. Fire At Sea
A timely documentary if there ever was one, Italian director Gianfranco Rosi’s Golden Bear-winning film Fire at Sea focuses on the migrant crisis in Europe. It’s been called an ‘anti-documentary’ and that wouldn’t be too far from the truth.
Shot and narrativized more like a fictional drama, it’s
a movie that’s both beautifully cinematic and wholly real. Curiously, there
isn’t much of a focus on the migrants themselves either – they pass through the
film quickly albeit in harrowing scenes that fully depict the desperation of
their situation. Instead, the focus is on the inhabitants of the Sicilian island
of Lampedusa, a passing point into Europe for many migrants, specifically a
young lad from a local fishing family and the local doctor who treats arriving
migrants.
Despite this, it’s never a one-sided film but rather a documentary that in its focus on a location in which migrants fleetingly pass through effectively demonstrates how many Europeans are distanced from the sad realities of the migrant crisis. And it’s all the more powerful precisely because of this.