NO MAN IS AN ISLAND by Tim De Keersmaecher @ Kino Svetozor (Prague, CZ)
No Man is an Island (Documentary, Belgium). Screening as part of the 2016 One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival on 11/03/2016, 19:00
There are plenty of films made about the migration crisis, and given the pressing nature of this issue on an international level, it is understandable that a film festival that prides itself as being fully dedicated to "human rights" should start off with this topic. After all, it is very much a current concern, and one that garnered attention even at the European Film Awards this year, with Wim Wenders himself recalling during the ceremony that he came from a place that had been divided by a wall, using it as a reference for the negative impact of cultural intolerance.
No Man is an Island is set on the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is an epicentre in this crisis. Many Africans looking for a better life end up stranded on this island after a harrowing journey. This film looks at the situation from the insight by looking at the lives of two young men who have been taken in by some inhabitants of the island and look to be set towards integration not only by being treated as part of the "native" families, but also in the eyes of the outside world.
Now, the film describes itself as a creative documentary, which is a term that sounds as trivial as they come. As an opening film, I am used to being regularly disappointed at no matter what festival I may attend. Remember that year that Grace of Monaco opened Cannes? What ever happened to that film? So, even a small scale film festival such as this - yes, it is small scale despite it selling itself to journalists as much more than that - should look to surprise its viewers with something a little more rewarding.
To me, watching this film, anyone unfamiliar with the atmosphere of the film will walk out of the film still quite unfamiliar. And as far as the "creative documentary" term used by its makers, well, I don't get it. It's not that creative. Anyone looking for something that actually is a "creative documentary" is kindly redirected to Above and Below, which I named as my favourite film from last year's edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. My problem with this screening was that given the fact that I soon found out about the incompetence of the press office, or at least the inability of the festival to look after its journalist in a proper way, I had all the intentions of approaching the director of the film Tim de Keersmaecker, and even committed to sticking around for a boring-as-usual Q and A session (it's not so much that the Q and A session itself was boring, as much as I generally find them boring no matter what.) But they left the screening room so fast that I simply had no chance to approach them.
In fairness, it may not even have been their fault, as this opening film was simultaneously screened in two other rooms, both of which were in Kino Lucerna, which is just across the street from Svetozor. Perhaps the whole affair was timed so that a Q and A session could take place after the screening in all of them.