Att minnas Lampedusa - Sorg

On 3 October 2013, an overcrowded fishing boat carrying Eritrean refugees caught fire off the island of Lampedusa and sank. At least 368 people died and 155 people survived. At the night of the disaster Adal Neguse, an Eritrean-Swedish health care worker and human rights advocate, woke up with a strange feeling. He turned on the news and learned that the ship had sank. Adal knew that his brother might be on the boat. He flew to Lampedusa and found out that his brother did not survive. Four times Adal has returned to Lampedusa to commemorate his brother’s death on the 3 October and to meet the survivors. He needed to know everything he could about the disaster and the journey. Adal also wants to raise awareness about the rights of refugees by remembering those who die at Europe’s borders. The disaster was the deadliest post war disaster in Italy and one that shocked publics across the world. It put the issue of migrant deaths at the European border on the public agenda and was reported in the media around the world.
Remembering Lampedusa is a collaborative film and research project that takes the challenge to listen to the survivors and the family members of the victims. With the survivors and Lampedusan civil rescuers a team of scholars, filmmakers, and refugee activists have created short documentary films based on story of the disaster and their survival. The films shows how each person’s emotional experience and memory is unique. Remembering Lampedusa – Grief is one of these films and it offers an alternative critical perspective to death at Europe’s borders. Instead of fatality metrics, numbers, and images of anonymous masses of people, the attention is on the individual person Adal: his memories, emotions, and thoughts. (Tempo Documentary Festival)