Fire at Sea

February 26, 2016 · Knoxville Museum of Art · 2:00 p.m.

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The first documentary to ever win the top award at the Berlin International Film Festival, Fire at Sea takes place in Lampedusa, a once peaceful Mediterranean island that has become a major entry point for African refugees into Europe. There we meet Samuele, a 12-year-old boy who lives simply, climbing rocks by the shore and playing with his slingshot. Yet nearby we also witness thousands of men, women, and children trying to survive the crossing from Africa in boats that are too small for the journey­. Filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi masterfully places these realities side by side, and in so doing creates a remarkable third narrative that jolts us into a new understanding of what is really happening in the Mediterranean today.

“It is precisely the artist’s mission of recording history, of giving form to the present moment, that Gianfranco Rosi has carried out boldly and thoroughly in his new documentary Fire at Sea. In engaging with the migrant crisis, he stands at the polar opposite of sentimental popular journalism, instead proposing a deliberately withdrawn and poetic meta-reflection on the collapse of modern civilization.” — Film Comment

“This is a deeply troubling, yet surprisingly beautiful work that you can’t help but describe—hackneyed though the phrase is—as a wake-up call for a Europe increasingly deadened to compassion.” — Sight and Sound

About the Filmmaker

Gianfranco Rosi as born in Asmara, Eritrea. He studied film at New York University and directed the documentaries Boatman (1993), Below Sea Level (2008), El Sicario, Room 164 (2010), and Sacro GRA (2013).