Human Flow by Ai WeiWei

Becky's Booktalks

This is a resource talk of Human Flow by Ai WeiWei. Released in 2017 and produced by AC Films and Participant Media.

Transcript:

Human Flow by Ai WeiWei

Imagine traveling across the great blue expanse of the Mediterranean Sea on a very little boat. This isn’t a scene from a future vacation, but rather something that millions of refugees do every year because their lives depend on it. This is also the opening scene to Human Flow by Ai WeiWei.

Human Flow is a documentary film which portrays the migration of millions of refugees throughout the world between 2015 and 2016. The film takes place on location at Lesbos, Greece, at the Greek – Macedonian border, at the Syrian – Jordan border, in Bangladesh, in Southern Italy, in Athens, in Turkey, at the Mexican – American border and other locations where people are fleeing or temporarily sheltered.

The largest strength of this film is the visual portray of the struggles of refugees. Hearing that people have been displaced is one thing, but visually seeing the harsh and miserable conditions these people are placed in is something else entirely. Some of the harshest conditions the movie shows are at the Greek – Macedonian border. Refugees who came to Greece via the Mediterranean Sea landed in Lesbos and then traveled by foot up to the border hoping to cross through. When they got there, the border was closed and a huge fence topped with barbed wire keeps the refugees stranded. 13,000 refugees are now staying at a camp at the border hoping it will reopen. They are sleeping in tents which are ill-equipped to withstand the weather. When it rains, people and everything they have with them becomes completely soaked. These poor living conditions have left people sick with fevers and diarrhea.

The people in these conditions look like they could be your neighbor, or your friends from school. In one scene, a home is shown after it was destroyed in a bombing. The home was large, the charred furniture that remains inside looks like furniture you would find in America. This scene really drives home the fact that the refugees are people like you and me, they were living there lives and now have to leave disastrous circumstances that were beyond their control.

Throughout the film, the footage is overlayed with facts and figures about refugees such as the fact that 210,000 African Refugees came to Southern Italy between 2015 and 2016 and that 1 million Syrian, Afghanistan, and Iraqi Refugees arrived in Greece between 2015 and 2016. These facts drive home that the images being seen are only a fraction of what is going on – that it is truly a refugee crisis.

When wondering “what experiences do children and teens go through as refugees and how can we help,” this film is truly enlightening. A young teen who made it to an indoor refugee camp in Germany states that she is bored, that everyone she knows in the camp is bored. Most refugee children in Turkey have not gone to school at all in the past 5 years. Teenage refugees in Gaza talk about their hopes and dreams to travel the world. The film also shows volunteers helping rafts arrive is Lesbos and volunteering handing out soup and food to refugees at camps.

This film seems to portray the circumstances accurately. Nothing is staged, Ai WeiWei is seen interacting with the refugees, talking to them one on one, and moving to different points to film what is going on. This movie is great for people who want to see first-hand footage of what refugees are going through.