Reading the brilliant comic book Foot to Land – Shipping aboard the Viking Ocean of the MarieMo on board the humanitarian ship of SOS Mediterranean Increasingly catalyzing the reactionary angers of a right hostile to its existence, the question of the representation of "migration" in the arts and especially in cinema emerges. Documentary or fiction? Naturalism or fantastic? There are many options to try to relate these broken fates in search of a better future. Exploring the question around a handful of films surrounding this theme...
From reality to fiction
How to narrate the history of exiles? This question arises from the reading of the comic book Foot to Earth MarieMo. The cartoonist who had already proposed Ice Hands in 2021 proposes here a dive in immersion on the Ocean Viking, the ship of SOS Mediterranean that patrol in the waters of the Mare Nostrumespecially on its most deadly stretch: the one linking Libya to the Italian coast. Between the right-wing political magoyles to hold the boats of the NGO at the ports, the organization on board, the rescue in itself and the actions to be carried out with these survivors of a near-certain death, the fine and meticulous trait of the artist draws his own journey to the first person while integrating there a floppy of documentary information.
This invariably makes it an exciting work that puts a double spotlight: first of all on those who risk their lives by trying to cross the sea at all costs after having already braved the horrors of Libyan jails, but also on those dedicated volunteers who jump on a boat to become a small ant within a real humanitarian effervescence. Each one at his post, well-rounded rituals, a thousand details to be fine-tuned so that everything goes at best for exiles, this brief moment at sea between rescue (sometimes perilous) and the violent arrival on the coasts synonymous with administrative and police rigors becomes a suspended time. A moment of exchange, sharing, far from the violence of their continent of departure, and before those of their country of arrival...
The cartoonist MarieMo makes the choice of documentary conciseness. Her sleek (and, let's say, rather splendid) drawing relates a personal experience to the first person and in which she appears directly, but this experience fits into a much more documented and contextualized matrix. The designer makes the choice of introducing her reader to the need for rescues at sea, numbers and maps in support. And when she can finally board the Ocean Viking, she will try to transcribe the many acronyms inherent in the marine rescue environment, the gestures of daily life, the inventiveness pearls necessary for this common life in a small space. Clearly understandable choices of clarity that make Foot to Earth Both an exalted narrative and a real wealth of information for those who wish to learn about these dramas that are playing at the gates of Europe but which the media very often prefer to silence. A choice among thousands of others that anyone wishing to adapt to the screen the life of one of these exiles will have to confront. How can they tell their lives? With what cinematic means? In this article we will try to probe some of these formal and narrative choices, exploring some of the films that fully embrace this theme.
« My trip started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp and somehow I found myself here on the biggest Hollywood scene. »
And to start this exploration and make this transition between comics and cinema, let's remember the words of the great Ke Huy Quan at the reception of his Oscar for "Best Second Role" in Everything, Everywhere, All at ounce. He who fled Vietnam with his father in 1978 to find himself in Hong Kong represents a happy point in a constellation of "migrations" smeared with destinies.
The choice of completeness : Human Flow
To begin this exploration, let us mention the choice of completeness. Tell the story of these people in a global carcan. Expand his project. Make the choice of visual rather than commentary. These are the ambitious choices of Chinese filmmaker and activist Ai Weiwei when he proposes the master Human Flow. The one who has spawned with the Beat Generation, who has understood the importance of the internet (and especially the blog) as a new form of expression and also the one who has had multiple addicts with the Chinese regime because of his openly critical works, amuses to parasitize Chinese institutions from within. He manages for example to publish his ironic poem Forget Despite the numerous censorships related to the commemoration of the 20 years of the massacre in Tiananmen Square.
« Let's forget about June 4, forget about this ordinary day. Life has taught us, under totalitarianism, that every day is the same. There's no "other day," "hierday," or "morrow." We do not need partial truth, no need for partial justice, no need for partial honesty.
Without freedom of speech, without freedom of information, without elections, we are not a people, we do not need to remember. With no possibility of remembering, we chose to forget.
Let us forget every case of persecution, every case of humiliation, every massacre and every attempt to hide it, every lie, every death. Forget every moment of suffering, and forget every moment forgotten. That's how these "honoured men" could turn us into ridiculous.
Let us forget the soldiers who shot at the civilians, the students whose bodies were crushed by the tank caterpillars, the whistle of the bullets, the blood on the main avenues and the counterways, a city and a place without tears. Forget the endless lies, the leaders who hope that everyone has forgotten, forget their lachurch, their mischievous and inept character. We must forget because they must be forgotten. We can only exist when they are forgotten. In order to exist, we must forget." Street89]
For Human Flow, Weiwei, who is improvising for the first time documentary, proposes a colossal project: to give an overview of the human migrations of this year's filming. Thus, in drone images, phone images, interviews, the 2h20 feature film covers over 40 refugee camps around the world. In Afghanistan as well as Switzerland, Iraq as in France, Syria as in Germany, Weiwei reports a real odyssey of images more striking than each other, scanned in an amazing rhythm.
And despite this choice of completeness, Weiwei always manages to focus on the human. By trying to transcribe the anecdotes of more than 200 people, he manages despite his overall context to keep a ladder at the height of men. To bring the spectator closer to these beings fleeing the war that the JT manage so well to dehumanize, to anonymize. If its sometimes raw tone, almost horrific, invariably makes the documentary change in the field of affect, it is not out of voyeuristic taste or out of desire to spread a good dose of pathos. No, Weiwei offers an emotional catalogue of what is being played out as tragic, but also dappy, vitalist, and hopeful, in these often very deceptive population movements. While the film is a pure observation and may sometimes lack a bit of analysis to dig beyond the shock of the images it offers us, it has the immense merit of unfolding on the screen all these stories that are so often killed. And that makes it a real cinema monument!
The choice of fiction: "I, Captain"
Matteo Garrone, after his hard Dogman, comes back with amazing Me, Captain. presented to the GIFF in 2023. Described as a homeric fairy tale, the feature film narrates the journey of two young Senegalese Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Mustapha Fall), who left Dakar to join Europe. The film clings to narrating the fate of these two buddies by making a not necessarily traditional choice: the narrative frame is not triggered by a violent dramatic event (they are just looking for another future), but also and above all the fact that Me, Captain. A pure fiction...
Garrone even allows for dreamy and fantastic stalls, which allow the Italian director to suggest some tragic events without necessarily spreading into a horror spread not necessarily easy to extract from some kind of cunning voyeurism. The fact of sticking to the Basques of these two young protagonists sometimes leads to Me, Captain. a somewhat harmful manicheism and simplism (some villains may be known to provide evil Me, Captain. They are themselves locked in a repressive matrix that makes them behave like this), but it is a very meagre reproach to apologise to apologise to this work in complete lag in relation to the whole coming of what the cinema proposes to us on this theme. In short, we understand it with these few words, Garrone manages to give a rather magnificent counter-field to the drama that is being played out in the Mediterranean. A tragedy that should also be remembered: according to IOM, the number of deaths was 2,048 in 2021 to 2,411 in 2022 and 3,041 at the end of 2023 (some figures probably largely underestimated).
The choice of comedy: "Les Barbares"
Even more abrupt is the choice of pure comedy to deal with the topic of migration. Kaurismäki certainly did with The other side of hope in 2017, but keeping its sweet-sweet tone a little rough which is its brand name. Barbarians of the Julie Delpy makes the choice of pure public comedy. A choice made easier by its situation (the film does not focus on migration itself, but on welcoming migrants) than by its ironic synopsis based on double standards, which is taking place in our host countries.
The film focuses on the small Breton (fictitious) municipality of Paimpont, which is fully mobilized to welcome a family of Ukrainian migrants. Unfortunately, given the enthusiasm of the host municipalities, Ukrainians fleeing the war are missing... They were then replaced by a family of Syrian refugees. The spirit of solidarity then breaks net...
Turned in the form of a sweet bitter tale, Barbarians is nothing but a little French comedy. Yet, in an ultra-formatted universe, very quick to disgust a frelate scenario after a frelate scenario in a very often reactionary carcan (Cocorico, What have we done to God? and all the very French-French Christian Clavier Cinematic Universe), the will of this small film object, the general public, is quite rejoicing. Visually, there is not much to wait for a purely functional staging, and if the film is pungent, it never reaches the bite of the best of social comedies of recent times (Happy winners with Fabrice Eboué, the films of Jean-Christophe Meurisse as Plastic Guns). Still an entertaining and smarter than average object (often rase-motte) of the mainstream French comedy, which manages to deal with the topic of migration. And that's not bad already.
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