2017
Video
Just Another Rescue At Sea!
Description
Just Another Rescue At Sea! is a short documentary of my first encounter rescuing migrants off the coast of Libya early one morning.
We had gone through the drill every morning at sea to prepare us for what was about to happen, but it didn't prepare me at all for the emotional experience that was about to hit me. I've never been so scared of what I was about to see and film. Would I be able to handle it?
I spotted a tiny dot flickering in the dead of night in the ocean. The search light was then immediately sent over to the area and there we saw a small rubber dingy overflowing with 150 men, woman and children. We quickly lowered our speed boat into the water and I jumped on board to go and face this unique situation for the very first time.
The amazing MOAS crew tried to keep the migrants calm while they threw lifejackets into their boat before disembarking 30 people at a time to take back to our main vessel. In the following 2 hours we picked up two more boats totalling 461 people on our boat alone from 17 countries. Another 1100 people were rescued that morning by other boats in the area. The migrants had never seen the sea before, couldn't swim, had no food or water and were very scared for their lives.
We wanted to make a moving portrait of this woman on the upper deck but she couldn't walk up the stairs from the leaky fuel cans which had given her serious skin burns. This happens a lot and can be fatal. I could only film her lying down on the main deck where she stayed for the three day journey to mainland Europe.
MOAS who run the boat do an amazing job going back and forth from the coast of Libya to Italy for months at a time rescuing 10's of thousands of people every year.
To find out more and help MOAS raise money for their work, copy and paste the link below.
https://www.moas.eu/patrons/
Directed by Adam Broomberg
Cinematography Adrian Wolfson
Edited by Paul Moth at Final Cut Edit
Grading by Jim Bracher at The Mill
Music by Coldplay
Shot on Sony A7SmkII, Canon C300mkII and GoPro cameras.