Human Flow

Doc­u­men­taries so often tell the sto­ries of what has passed, but a new film by artist and activist Ai Wei­wei puts the cam­era into a very active issue. Span­ning 23 coun­tries, with over 200 crew mem­bers, he observes the mass migra­tion of refugees cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing across Europe and the often hos­tile reac­tion to their arrival by var­i­ous des­ti­na­tion coun­tries. Talk­ing to peo­ple affect­ed in a vari­ety of ways and pro­pelled by hope alone, this is a jus­ti­fi­ably har­row­ing look behind the head­lines. Yet Ai doesn’t weep and wail.

There’s no overt provo­ca­tion here. Instead, the artist paints por­traits. Walk­ing through the bor­ders (some­times infu­ri­at­ing patrol guards), he meets the peo­ple affect­ed and sees them for who they are. Not the face­less, hud­dled mass­es of TV reports and char­i­ty adverts; but peo­ple with names, pets, smart­phones. In between the moments of despair we see moments of lev­i­ty, such as a child pok­ing her moth­er with a bal­loon ani­mal, or Ai ​‘swap­ping pass­ports’ with one of his inter­vie­wees. Opti­mism is as impor­tant to this sto­ry as out­rage or despair.

Iden­ti­fy­ing the dis­pos­sessed in such an unpa­tro­n­is­ing, human way has a dev­as­tat­ing impact. At one moment the cam­era sits qui­et­ly as broth­ers hold each oth­er and weep, unsure of what to do next. The next it soars over camps watched by entranced chil­dren. Local politi­cians, admin­is­tra­tors and aca­d­e­mics point the fin­ger of blame in var­i­ous direc­tions (main­ly west­ward), out­lin­ing the frus­trat­ing com­plex­i­ty of the argu­ment that keeps these peo­ple in stasis.

What­ev­er your pol­i­tics, how­ev­er, it’s hard to imag­ine the images Ai cap­tures on the ground not elic­it­ing a deeply emo­tion­al response. Rather than sim­ply lec­tur­ing, rather than ago­nis­ing, Human Flow invites you to feel. Ai’s inten­tion is to draw com­pas­sion, and in that sense the film is an absolute triumph.