Sarajevo Songs of Woe
A personal encounter with the world of the refugees currently detained on the Greek island of Lesvos. Completed in 2018, NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL is a uniquely poetic and truthful documentary about one of…
Sarajevo Songs of Woe
A personal encounter with the world of the refugees currently detained on the Greek island of Lesvos. Completed in 2018, NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL is a uniquely poetic and truthful documentary about one of the darkest and most seminal political historical events of the start of the 21st century: the founding of a zone of exclusion within the Eurozone. The end of March 2018 marks the second anniversary of the ruling body of the Eurozone radically revising its policy regarding undocumented migrants arriving on the Aegean shores of Greece. At that time the European Commission declared undocumented migrants arriving on the Aegean islands would be sent back to Turkey. We were there a few weeks later with our camera on Lesvos-the main point of entry-interviewing people experiencing for the first time camps that had been constructed for the purpose of processing people transformed into concentration camps where people are held today indefinitely. Europe was where the formulation les droits de l'homme et du citoyen, "the rights of the human being and of the citizen" was first declared. The long history and breakdown of this formulation witnessed by NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL, the incredible compassion of the volunteers, the conflicting responses of the people living on the island-many of them descended themselves from refugees-and the refugees themselves, all of whom are interviewed individually or as part of their families, create a uniquely profound film that will remain a vital record of this major confrontation between the principles on which Europe was founded and its current choices. —Richard C. Ledes
Sarajevo Songs of Woe
Drama
Film Details
A personal encounter with the world of the refugees currently detained on the Greek island of Lesvos. Completed in 2018, NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL is a uniquely poetic and truthful documentary about one of the darkest and most seminal political historical events of the start of the 21st century: the founding of a zone of exclusion within the Eurozone. The end of March 2018 marks the second anniversary of the ruling body of the Eurozone radically revising its policy regarding undocumented migrants arriving on the Aegean shores of Greece.
At that time the European Commission declared undocumented migrants arriving on the Aegean islands would be sent back to Turkey. We were there a few weeks later with our camera on Lesvos-the main point of entry-interviewing people experiencing for the first time camps that had been constructed for the purpose of processing people transformed into concentration camps where people are held today indefinitely. Europe was where the formulation les droits de l'homme et du citoyen, "the rights of the human being and of the citizen" was first declared.
The long history and breakdown of this formulation witnessed by NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL, the incredible compassion of the volunteers, the conflicting responses of the people living on the island-many of them descended themselves from refugees-and the refugees themselves, all of whom are interviewed individually or as part of their families, create a uniquely profound film that will remain a vital record of this major confrontation between the principles on which Europe was founded and its current choices. —Richard C. Ledes.