Rosi, Gianfranco, Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare). 2016, 1 hour and 54 minutes. In Italian (with English subtitles)

Hannah Arendt (1990) argues that images of people living through poverty, war and conflict, must avoid turning human suffering into a spectacle. This, she argues, is integral for mobilising an ethical and political public discourse on human vulnerability, and for galvanising spectators, predominantly in the global north, to form a community of interest with the oppressed and the exploited. Despite Arendt’s warnings, images of human agony, tragedy and misery were impossible to avoid during the European migrant ‘crisis’ of 2015 and 2016. Precarious and overfilled boats of desperate and distressed refugees, as well their lifeless bodies, were a recurring feature in newspapers, on the television, and in fundraising and advocacy campaigns.

Gianfranco Rosi, a political documentary film maker, set out to subvert the narrative of distress, chaos, and victimhood which dominates the public narrative of the refugee ‘crisis,’ by foregrounding stories that are marginalised in mainstream media. In particular, he spent 18 months on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa during the frenzied media attention of 2015/2016, in order to document the impact = of the refugee crisis on residents, as well as the experiences of refugees, when they are rescued and brought ashore. Lampedusa is only 20km2, yet, incredibly, 400,000 African and Middle Eastern refugees have arrived during the last twenty years, in the hope of starting a new life in Europe. Though thousands have died making this journey.

The film won the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The Guardian newspaper, to the Atlantic cites ‘Fire at Sea’ as “Masterly and moving”, and “powerful, and beautifully shot”, respectively. I agree with much of what these reviews have to say; Rosi is an excellent filmmaker - his imaging, pacing, and composition are superb, and it is a beautiful and intensely compelling film. It is also innovative as it differs from the hyperbole of mainstream media, by framing refugees’ dangerous journey against a background of the everyday lives of the Lampedusa residents.

In particular, Samuele, a 12 year old boy, is filmed playing amongst trees and rowing boats in the harbour. His uncle, a fisherman, is captured diving for shellfish, which Samuele’s grandmother later prepares for the family meal. Through this, Rosi cleverly and subtly reminds the viewer that the sea does not only signify a place of death and danger, but that it simultaneously continues to function as an ‘ordinary’ place of play and livelihoods, despite the many lives that are tragically and extraordinarily lost not so far away from such activities. Relatedly, despite their proximity to such tragedies, Lampedusa residents remain largely oblivious and unaffected by the many lives that arrive to the island, or which are lost in the surrounding waters (except for the occasional radio bulletin). Here, Rosi is seeking audiences to reflect on their own obliviousness and apathy in relation to the refugee crisis, and perhaps even their complicity in human suffering.

However, despite the film’s attempts to document refugee experiences, the story is partial and problematically incomplete. This film tells a very apolitical story, as there is minimum attention given to the political status and treatment of refugees on arrival, let alone the reasons why people are fleeing their home countries in the first instance. The journey of people across the Mediterranean is portrayed as the most pertinent and important element of refugee experiences and politics, when, in reality, this is one element in a much larger and complicated picture. This is not entirely surprising as the depoliticisation and decontextualisation of refugee politics is a common criticism among scholars working on the visual politics of ‘suffering others’ (see Boltanski 1999, Chouliaraki 2013, Hickerson and Dunsmore 2016, Moeller 1999).

Rosi’s extensive conversations with refugees are also effectively silenced because there is a near total erasure of refugees’ voices, personal identities, and histories. Scenes which feature refugees, (re)produce familiar scenes of distressed and desperate groups of black bodies being rescued, cared for, or processed by Italians. There are harrowing scenes below deck, where dozens of dead bodies are piled on top of one another after people have died from oppressive heat, inhalation of exhaust fumes, and/or dehydration. As such, the film does not dismantle the spectacle of human agony. Rather, it relies on common tropes of victimhood, through scenes that attempt to depict the ‘raw reality’ of suffering. Ultimately this serves to further ‘other’ refugees through over-used images that are dehumanising and which fetishize refugee bodies.

In contrast, the film is dominated by the personal stories and experiences of Lampedusa residents, and their relationship with the island. Through this, the audience ultimately learns more about a romanticised identity of the island and its residents, at the expense of the hundreds of refugees who are filmed as mass movements of silent, voiceless, and identity-less bodies. This filmic technique is damaging because it (re)produces notions of homogeneity and passivity, which entrench colonial relations between a historically privileged global north, and a marginalised and silenced global south.

The cinematography of Fire at Sea is beautiful, and Rosi does well to steer audiences’ attention towards stories that are peripheral to the medias’ coverage of the refugee ‘crisis’. However, in doing so, and when considering Arendt’s notions about the politics and ethics of imagery, the film is a missed opportunity to foreground refugee voices, experiences and identities.

Arendt, H. (1990[1973]) On Revolution. London: Penguin Books.

Boltanski, L. (1999). Distant suffering: Morality, media and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chouliaraki, L. (2013). The ironic spectator: Solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism. London: John & Sons.

Hickerson, A., & Dunsmore, K. (2016). Locating Refugees: A media analysis of refugees in the United States in ‘World Refugee Day’ coverage. Journalism Practice, 10(3), 424-438.

Moeller, S. D. (1999). Compassion fatigue: How the media sell disease, famine, war and death. Psychology Press.

Gemma Sou

Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester