THOSE WHO FEEL THE FIRE BURNING Breakthrough

Morgan Knibbe’s poetic experimental documentary captures with raw force the modern migrant experience in Europe, as seen through the eyes of a deceased shipwreck victim. With darkly sparkling cinematography and Malick-esque fragmented voiceover narration, we follow the path of migrants from a terrifying, visually suffocating sequence at sea to an alien-seeming Europe made up of lonely streets, cramped apartments and desperate scrambles to secure work. Expanded from Knibbe’s short film SHIPWRECK (AFI FEST 2014), which scored the award for best short film at Locarno 2014 and subsequently earned a European Film Award nomination, THOSE WHO FEEL THE FIRE BURNING was one of three films nominated for the top prize at Amsterdam’s prestigious IDFA. It’s easy to see why: The film’s blend of intimate access and magical realism jolts the viewer out of the familiarity of a headline crisis and into the stark, can’t-look-away reality of struggle. —Beth Hanna