This Week at the Movies: One Hundred Four

Every year, thousands of people fleeing crisis regions around the world across the Mediterranean to Europe are registered as missing or dead. According to the UN Refugee Agency, at least 3,760 people died or disappeared just last year. The European Union is violating current laws with its border policies, and Frontex is obstructing sea rescue efforts. In his documentary feature debut "One Hundred Four," Jonathan Schörnig sheds light on the humanitarian crisis in real-time and very directly: without commentary, music or elaborate camerawork, and almost without editing, his documentary puristically shows how 104 people are rescued from the waves seemingly agonizingly slowly and with the same repeated movements during a rescue mission of the "Eleonore" in late summer 2019. The situation escalates when the Libyan coast guard appears, and the "Eleonore" cannot find a port to dock. Urgent and highly relevant, "One Hundred Four" is an important and highly topical document that once again makes it incomprehensible how people in life-threatening situations are denied help, and civilian rescuers are threatened and criminalized. At DOK Leipzig festival, the film was awarded no less than four highly deserved prizes.