Film
#387
- Social drama
- Slow-burning
#387 is a 61-minute documentary following a Greek doctor and Italian activist who work to identify the remains of migrants who died crossing the Mediterranean. It's a film about witnessing, about persistent humanity in the face of bureaucratic indifference, and about people who refuse to let the dead stay nameless. Quietly devastating and essential.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a slow, unhurried look at the human cost of migration, where forensic patience and quiet tenderness matter more than plot, and you're willing to sit with grief that never turns into spectacle.
Skip it if it is spare and austere, with little narrative drive, so if you need a story to pull you forward, the stillness may feel like waiting.
What it asks of you: An hour at a measured, unhurried pace, with a sober subject and few lighter moments; it wants steady attention more than emotional bracing.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Fire at Sea2016
Gianfranco Rosi's camera watches Lampedusa as migrant boats arrive and life continues. A masterwork of observational cinema that lets you feel the weight of ordinary proximity to catastrophe without manipulation.
But It moves at the pace of waiting. Some find the restraint too distant, wishing for more explicit emotional cues about what to feel.
The Last Shelter2021
Follows a small group of people running a refugee shelter in Rome with unflinching intimacy. Shows care work as unglamorous, necessary labour that rarely receives attention or resources.
But Heavy subject matter about displacement and bureaucratic cruelty. The lack of resolution may feel bleak depending on your tolerance for discomfort.
A Syrian Love Story2015
Follows a Syrian couple separated by the civil war, using phone calls and footage they shot themselves. Intimate and urgent, a love story as an act of resistance against erasure.
But Difficult subject matter. The found-footage aesthetic can feel raw to the point of disorientation for some viewers.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from #387
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Nocturama2016
Both films treat witnessing as a moral act and demand that viewers sit with their own implication in systems of harm.
Kleber Mendonça Filho narrative feature about class and complicity, shot with documentary precision. Completely different story, but identical in its refusal to look away from structures that enable suffering and the people trapped inside them.
But Deliberately slow and enigmatic. No character tells you what to think. Some find this maddening rather than clarifying.
More like this (1)
In the Fade2017
Fatih Akin's narrative film about a woman navigating grief and the justice system after a terrorist attack. Gorgeous cinematography paired with rage. A masterclass in how to hold complexity about violence and its aftermath.
But It's a fiction film, not a documentary, so shifts your relationship to the material. Some courtroom sequences are procedurally dense.
