Fire at Sea

The subject of this documentary is Lampedusa, a small Italian island south of Sicily. The camera follows the ordinary activities of its local inhabitants while also exposing the migrants who end up there on crowded makeshift boats: Africans fleeing despair and persecution from their various homelands.

The style of this film is cinema-vérité, simply observing the various subjects in a very quiet way. Most of the attention is given to the island residents, particularly a twelve-year old boy. In the beginning, there are occasional feelings of boredom but once getting used to the meditative style, the movie is quite rewarding.

At first, one might wonder why there is less attention on the migrants but this eventually becomes understandable. If they had been the main subject, it is possible the viewer would feel overwhelmed and numb by the end. The smaller number of scenes end up having a greater impact. While not always horrific, the viewer sees up close the people behind the headlines - the migrants as well as the rescuers. Emotions run high before the viewer is bought back to daily routine life on the island which seems very distant from the lives of the migrants.

Director Gianfranco Rosi is very wise in avoiding any methods to heighten the real-life drama. The approach as a simple witness works perfectly especially in some highlighted scenes: the despair of a local doctor who is distressed by the plight of so many; a Nigerian refugee recounting the plight of his former country and finding more trouble in Libya as he and others traveled north; and of course, the indescribable feelings of seeing a large boat with hundreds of people cramped in it.