Human Flow

Human Flow is the latest film from director, artist, and famed political dissident Ai Weiwei, with a close look at the refugee crisis. Via The Intercept:

I want the right of life, of the leopard at the spring,
of the seed splitting open
I want the right of the first man
–Nazim Hikmet, Turkish poet

The words appear over the sea at dawn as “Human Flow” begins. A lighthouse comes into view, a boat with mountains silhouetting the horizon, a lone helicopter flies in the distance, the tones are purple, gray, the pace calm. A motor boat resolves, people in life jackets waving, tires thrown into the sea, children lifted ashore. And there’s Ai with his camera. He’s an odd, jarring image at first in this film. Why the Chinese dissident?

Now we’re in the desert. Tents as far as we can see. Dust. Iraq hosts 277,000 refugees fleeing Syria. We read that following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, 268,000 people have been killed in violent conflicts in Iraq. More than 4 million Iraqis have been forcibly displaced from their homes. A girl appears in the entryway to her tent. We travel with the camera through streets of Dresden-like devastation in Syria. The refugees in the desert camp stand for portraits in a tent. A young woman in a red blouse and plaid long skirt. The camera doesn’t move. And in the long lingering shots, the close-up faces of refugees or police or rescue and aid workers, the sea, trainers washing their horses in the sea, a boy pushing a cart with jerry cans through a red dust storm, girls pounding dough on rocks in the mud, landscapes of beauty and destruction in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France, Palestine and Kenya, our imagination is left to wander, or to relive moments from our own or our family’s history.