Making drama out of the refugee crisis

Films about Europe’s migrant crisis run the risk of being artful and exploitative.

Now directors are seeking to redress the balanceThe release in cinemas next month of young British film-maker Orban Wallace’s Another News Story provides an opportunity to reflect on how documentaries have covered the European migrant crisis since it came to widespread attention in 2015.

Wallace’s brilliant film turns the camera on the news crews and film-makers who have spent the past three years waiting on harbours, cliffs and train tracks to get the most dramatic footage of thousands of desperate people trying to reach and cross Europe.

This is important not as an intellectual exercise but because it questions complacency in film-makers and audiences who have seen a lot of these images.Another News Story questions the aestheticising of the crisis, whereby film-makers create beautifully framed images of mass movements of unidentified people running

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