A Common Theme for This Year’s Oscar-Nominated Documentaries
The documentary 4.1 miles Open a bright and sunny day on the Aegean Sea. It is October 28, 2015, and for a moment the setting is magnificent: blue sky, blue water, horizon tilted in and out of sight. Then you hear the cries. A gloved hand extends outside the setting and returns by pulling a young boy safe aboard a guard’s boat. Then the captain turns with a little girl in his arms. “Place the camera,” he said to the person behind the lens. “Take this.”
Just over four kilometers from Turkey, the Greek island of Lesbos was on the front line of the global refugee crisis. Since January 2014, more than 1.5 million people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, many fleeing the Syrian civil war, the rise of the Islamic State and the oppressive regimes and poverty in sub -Saharan Africa. More than 12,000 people died or disappeared along the way, but many of those who survived the short but treacherous trip landed on Lesbos, which received more than 500,000 migrants in 2015 only.
Film nominated for 20 -minute Oscars by Daphne Matziaraki 4.1 miles The captain of the Greek coastal guard Kyriakos Papadopoulos follows while he and a small crew on the lesbos go to sea again to pick men, women and desperate children of the swells. Before thousands of Syrians, Afghans and Iraqi began to go in boats in the hope of finding a refuge in Europe, Papadopoulos spent his days of routine patrols. But the film finds the captain in the role of professional savior without any training or additional equipment – an average citizen trying to face a humanitarian disaster.
Of the 10 nominated films for 2017 Oscars in the documentary categories, four deal with the Syrian conflict or the refugee crisis. With 4.1 milesThe original Netflix White helmets And Watani: my homeland are ready for the abbreviated documentary Oscar, while the Italian film Sea fire was nominated for the best functionality documentary. The strength of these projects lies in the emotional and often austere portraits that they paint with their characters. If the public can imagine itself in place of Syrian rescuers, a Greek captain on the coast, a submerged doctor or a migrant mother, these films can make more than enlighten or inform. Their creators all told me that they hoped that, like other documentaries that mobilized viewers and influenced legislators, their films can make problems remotely urgently urgent.
Film appointments were announced only four days after the inauguration of President Donald Trump and three days before publishing a decree of suspension of admission to refugees from Syria indefinitely and all other countries for 120 days. The ordinance also temporarily interrupted the arrivals of the mainly Muslim nations and reduces the total number of refugees that would be admitted to the United States in 2017 by more than half to 50,000. Although the travel ban has since been suspended by the Federal Courts, Trump’s decree has triggered demonstrations in airports through the country and pushed the people and problems repulsed in these documentaries. national spotlights.
“When I made the film [in 2015]I thought it was very opportune because it was when the refugee crisis was in the news, “said Matziaraki.” I never imagine that unfortunately, the film would be so much more appropriate in the United States “when it is unusual to have so many candidates for the Oscars tackling the same subject, White helmets Producer Joanna Natasegara told me that it made sense in this case: “The narration has always been committed to the most urgent problems at any time, and perhaps even more than the story than the story [film]. “These problems today,” she said, “are the refugee crisis and the war in Syria.
As a medium, documentaries offer an often missing intimacy and concentration in daily news. Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the escalation of violence and the floods of migrants that have resulted have been covered by the international press, but faced with constant coverage, it is difficult for many readers to maintain the same level of day -to -day attention. It is often necessary a particularly horrible image – a toddler washed on a beach, a 5 -year -old child in white covered with blood and dust – to re -grove interest.
Matziaraki, who grew up in Greece but is now based in the San Francisco Bay region, said that she felt disconnected from the disaster playing in her homeland. When she arrived on Lesbos, she discovered that the situation was worse than she had imagined it. “I really wanted to make a film that [bridge] This gap between our comfort zone and the reality of the world, ”she said.
THE White helmets Director Orlando von Einsiedel also admitted to having been numb in the tragedy. The film, directed with Natasegara, tells the story of the Syrian civil defense, a group of volunteer rescuers in the country who respond to attacks on civilians. When the filmmakers saw a YouTube video from white helmets pulling a newborn baby from a bombed building, they recognized a missing story in the consumer representation of Syria. “There is a confusing and unbalanced image of what remains for Syrian civilians on the ground, and a vacuum of any story about the Syrians help or be active in their own savings,” Natasegara told me. “The idea of the Syrian hero was almost completely absent from the media landscape.” The white helmets were “the perfect anecdote” of this gap: they were former bakers, manufacturers, tailors and students who had gathered to save their Syrian colleagues.
The other film specific to Syria, Watani: my homeland The family of a rebel commander follows in Aleppo who was kidnapped by the Islamic State. His wife hala, and their four children make the heartbreaking decision to flee the country and start a new life in Germany. Director Marcel Mettelsiefen, a veteran photojournalist who covered the Arab Spring, said that documentaries offer an emotional path in a story that can otherwise feel abstract. “The importance of documentary cinema is to humanize the conflict,” he told me.
In the features category, Gianfranco Rosi Sea fire Focus on Lampedusa, an Italian island where hundreds of thousands of African refugees have landed since the 1990s. The filmmaker moved to Lampedusa for a year and a half to understand both the rhythms of daily life and the painful journey that migrants endure to get there. “The film is a cry of help to raise awareness,” Rosi told me, telling a conversation with a migrant. “When I asked them,” Why cross the sea if you could die? ” They said, “It is the word” could “that makes us cross the sea.
Although documentaries may have been considered explosive educational dishes, their reputation for an exciting and dominant art form has undoubtedly increased in recent years. Due to new distribution and social media options, documentaries now have the potential to reach a more global audience. Out of license White helmets At the Netflix video giant, Von Einsiedel and Natasegara made their film available in 190 countries (another documentary nomine for Oscars 13th is also on Netflix). Matziaraki 4.1 Miles –Produced while she was a student with journalism at the University of California -Berkeley – can be seen on the New York Times“Website, free for anyone with an internet connection. Sea fire was published in 64 countries, including Japan, where it opened earlier this month. According to ReutersThe country accepted only 28 refugees in 2016, but the 22 -hour presentation sold in Tokyo during the opening evening.
Documentaries can often have clear and measurable consequences, which has prompted politicians to act or invest the general public in a problem that affects them. A 2015 study revealed that GrassThe 2010 documentary on the dangers of hydraulic fracturing led to a greater discussion on social media and increased coverage of mass media, after its release and subsequent appointment for an Oscar in 2011. Sometimes films are credited with inspiring legislation – as was the case with the 2012 Oscars of 2012 from 2012 Invisible warwho investigated sexual assault in the 2013 army and documentary Poison fishwhich explored the treatment of orca whales at Seaworld. Of course, some films have been criticized for misleading audiences by omitting annoying details or torsion statistics to make a more convincing argument or an interesting story (just like the accusation level for the 2010 documentary In the meantime “Superman», Which depicts schools with a charter as the prescription of a public education system in difficulty.)
Although it is too early to find out if this year’s Oscar -nominated documentaries have had a broader effect on understanding people of the migrant crisis or the Syrian conflict, some of the filmmakers have already seen their work resonate on a smaller scale. Matziaraki said she had received letters from viewers asking how they can help or make a donation, including the one who went to Lesbos to volunteer after seeing 4.1 miles. “The people who write to me and say to me:” Thank you for changing my mind. Thank you for making me realize what’s going on. It may be the most important thing, “said Matziaraki.
In the Sea fire The experience of director Rosi, the emotional link favored by these documentaries inevitably leads to a question: “What can I do?” On the phone of New York, one of Rosi’s film subjects, Pietro Bartolo, offered an answer. As a doctor from Lampedusa, Bartolo is often the first person to have real human contacts with the refugees who arrive; It is also the man who makes autopsies on those who do not do it alive. He told me that it was important to just show migrants that they are welcome. “People say,” Can I come to Lampedusa to help? ” We don’t need help. “On Lampedusa, we are the door. That we leave it open, it is not enough. [When the refugees] Arriving in Europe, they need to feel that they are at home. »»
