Ai Weiwei brings the refugee drama to the Venice Film Festival
Venice - An epic tragedy, 65 million refugees, a real human tide: this is what Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was able to film in his documentary "Human Flow" screened at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. A stream of live recorded images of despair from all over the globe, which is leaving a mark in history, a mass of people escaping from wars, persecutions and scared to leave their homes. The greatest human displacement since World War II, an event of biblical proportions that the world is struggling to sustain, leaving behind wreckage that affects the consciousness of the Old Continent. Two extremely intense hours and 20 minutes to come to terms with the threat of human suffering, experienced with despair by the protagonists on the run and with dismay by nations unprepared to welcome them. Ai Weiwei, who has now been living and working in Berlin for years, spent several years travelling around the world, visiting countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Iraq, Kenya and Mexico. He has collected sequences of faces of men, women and many children in search of hope and portrays them with heartfelt simplicity to convey their suffering, grasping moments and their words and fears. The walls raised, the immense slums of the reception centers, the improvised camps: in this documentary, these scenes are not as cold or full of rhetoric as seen on TV reports, allowing the viewer to discover a more complete spiritual dignity. The film, which will be distributed in Italy by 01 Distribution, offers a vivid and profound look at the reasons behind this tragedy and the human reality, which is its essence.