Med migrants through their own lens: building a new future

Daniel Nelson

Documentaries about “small boats” usually portray the migrant passengers as victims of people smugglers. Not in The Travelers (Les Voyageurs).

In this film the camera is in the hands of one of the West Africans preparing to risk their lives by setting off in a dinghy for Europe.

The faces peering into the lens are far from passive: they are boisterous, noisy, vocal, joshing, teasing, confident, exuding a never-say-die spirit and determination to overcome all odds.

“We are warriors,” declares one defiantly, full of bravado.

They expect better lives, often in order to send money back to parents. 

“I have to make up for all my mistakes. For this, I have to enter Europe.”

“We are soldiers,” says another. “Our families depend on us.”

They shout and sing songs, play cards, have fun opening a bottle of cheap wine.

Ok, some of this joyfulness is performance for the camera, some is designed to maintain optimism in the face of hardships: rough living, arguments over food and tactics, being blocked and pushed back by guards and police. At one point they are packed into a bus and sent miles away from the beach from which they hope to launch themselves; they rebel, start moving from side to side in the vehicle, threatening to overturn it. The driver gives in, throws them out and abandons them. They regroup, make an encampment and work out how to get back on track.

In addition, the film focuses on a handful of individuals, a happy band of brothers, as Shakespeare’s Henry V describes his soldiers, heavily outnumbered as they go into battle against the French. The motives, expectations and feelings of the wider group are unexplored.

It’s basically a home movie about moving home, snatches of film and not enough information.

It’s rudimentary film-making, and perhaps could be seen as playing into the hands of racists raising the spectre of a tide of young men heading to Europe for a better standard of living rather than seeking asylum.

But aid, refugee and migrant organisations advocate that people should be able to tell their own stories, rather than have them told and interpreted by intermediaries. And this film does exactly that: the camera is in the hands of an underprivileged, much abused group  And indeed they do see themselves in a positive, heroic light, strong  and building a new future.