Fire at sea / Fuocoammare

The Onassis Stegi, StraDa Films and the Athens International Film Festival “Opening Nights”present the première of the award-winning documentary "Fire at Sea" on 5 April 2016 in the Main Stage of the Onassis Stegi. The documentary, which took the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival as well as the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Amnesty International Film Prize, spurred the Italian Prime Minister to declare that "Fuocoammare" might well turn the debate on the refugee issue around. The première will be held in the presence of the director, Gianfranco Rosi, who will introduce his film.

Although Gianfranco Rosi’s initial idea on first visiting Lampedusa island was to make a short film, he quickly realized how hard it would be to compress such a multi-faceted world into just a few minutes. As Gianfranco Rosi writes in his director’s notes: “Personally speaking, for a long time Lampedusa was nothing more than a noise of voices and images generated by TV spots and shocking headlines about deaths, emergencies, invasions and populist rebellions. However, when I went to the island, I discovered a truth very different from that being presented by the journalists and politicians and realized it would be impossible to condense a world as complex as Lampedusa into a few minutes of film. Understanding it would require the audience’s time and full attention. It wasn’t going to be easy. I knew I would have to find a way in.” To make the film, he ended up moving to Lampedusa and living on the island for about a year. There, he focused on the permanent inhabitants and everyday life in a place people were now struggling in their thousands to reach. “Living on Lampedusa, I realized how empty of meaning the word ‘emergency’ really is. Every day is an emergency. Something happens every day.”