Please note: This was screened in July 2017
"A masterpiece of empathy and moral imagination”
- Joshua Oppenheimer, Director of The Act of Killing.
An unprecedented, first person perspective on the experience of migrants on the threshold of Europe, this innovative and powerful documentary is a compelling account of an African migrant enduring great hardship to reach Europe and make a better life.
In northern Morocco lies the Spanish enclave of Melilla: Europe on African land. On the mountain above live over a thousand hopeful African migrants, watching the fence separating Morocco and Spain. Abou Bakar Sidibé from Mali is one of them, who's been ceaselessly trying to make a successful jump for over a year. Given a camera by the film’s directors Moritz Siebert and Estephan Wagner, Abou documents the daily life of these refugees – the long periods of tedium punctuated by frequent fruitless attempts to jump the fences. From the inside, Abou casually captures the danger and the camaraderie, the boredom and the hope, the quasi-normality and the extraordinary singularity of life in this limbo land.
Putting aside the headlines, the statistics, and the politics of global migration, through Abou’s lens the desperation of tens of thousands of refugees to reach Europe becomes tangible and deeply moving. A testament to their courage and an indictment of the world’s neglect, Those Who Jump depicts the plight of African refugees from a bold new perspective.
Crossings: Stories of Migration is an Institute of Contemporary Arts-led UK-wide film and events programme supported by the BFI using National Lottery funding and in partnership with the Goethe-Institut.
