Fire at Sea

Directed by Gianfranco Rosi

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Release Year: 2016
Running time: 108
Country: Italy, France
Language: Italian with English Subtitles
$7.99 - Classroom Rights
MSRP: $34.95
$349.00 - With PPR
$499.00 - With DSL
$499.00 - With DSL and PPR
MSRP: $599.00
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Directed by: Gianfranco Rosi

Academy Award® Nominee for Best Documentary Feature

Samuele is twelve and lives on an island in the Mediterranean, far away from the mainland. Like all boys of his age he does not always enjoy going to school. He would much rather climb the rocks by the shore, play with his slingshot or mooch about the port. But his home is not like other islands. For years, it has been the destination of men, women and children trying to make the crossing from Africa in boats that are far too small and decrepit. The island is Lampedusa which has become a metaphor for the flight of refugees to Europe, the hopes, hardship and fate of hundreds of thousands of emigrants. These people long for peace, freedom and happiness and yet so often only their dead bodies are pulled out of the water. Thus, every day the inhabitants of Lampedusa are bearing witness to the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our times.


Gianfranco Rosi’s observations of everyday life bring us closer to this place that is as real as it is symbolic, and to the emotional world of some of its inhabitants who are exposed to a permanent state of emergency. At the same time his film, which is commentary-free, describes how, even in the smallest of places, two worlds barely touch.

Reviews

"Five Stars – A masterly and moving look at the migrant crisis."

- —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
 

"Critics' Pick – Impressionistic and intensely absorbing."

- —A. O. Scott, The New York Times
 

"Deliberate storytelling that allows us to consider what documentary can do. It is urgent, imaginative and necessary filmmaking."

- —Meryl Streep
 

"The European migrant crisis has found its cinematic Pietà in Fire At Sea, Italian director Gianfranco Rosi's powerful, at times shocking but also intensely human documentary."

- —Lee Marshall, Screen International
 

"Five Stars – Fire at Sea is a masterpiece not only of documentary filmmaking but of timely and abiding storytelling. The filmmaker/cinematographer is a master of light, bathing each image with meaning."

- —Anne-Katrin Titze, Eye for Film
 

"Where journalism leaves off, Fire at Sea begins. It takes a unique documentary filmmaker like Gianfranco Rosi to capture the drama through the periscope of his camera focused on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa."

- —Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter
 

Awards

Academy Award® Nominee – Best Documentary Feature

 

Winner, Golden Bear, 2016 Berlin International Film Festival 

 

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