FIRE AT SEA won the 'Golden Bear' best picture award at the Berlin Film Festival in February. Part documentary, part docudrama, it was filmed on the Italian island of Lampedusa, which lies roughly midway between Libya and Sicily and has become the first port of call for more than 100,000 migrants from Africa and the Middle East. Over 15,000 have drowned, dying to be set free from terror and tyranny and poverty.

We see the Italian navy rescuing migrants from their sinking overcrowded boats and dinghies; many of them are in a desperate condition after days at sea. We get glimpses of the 'internment camp'where they wait to be processed and sent on to their uncertain future in a Europe which is increasingly unwelcoming.

Alternating with the refugee crisis, the film's main focus is Samuele, a 12-year-old Lampedusan who lives with his fisherman father and grandmother. The family play themselves in the style of a Pasolini movie (minus the sex and the blasphemy). We watch Samuele slurping spaghetti, struggling with homework, playing with a slingshot. They seem to have a very limited awareness of the migrant situation, although that is perhaps only the director's way of pointing up the contrast between the ordinariness of their lives and the appalling tragedy taking place in the waters around their island.

This heart-wrenching film offers no solution to the crisis. How could it? There clearly isn't one.

This documentary film is not in detail like any normal documentary does, to highlight the rights and wrongs. Actually, it speaks less and reveals more through its pictures. So anybody can make their own narration watching this film. The filmmakers left that part empty for you the viewers to decide. But my advice for you if you want to try this, that don't expect it to be about the 'immigration' alone. This film was multi-layered. There are many angles of focus about different topics, but kind of all are connected which is the Mediterranean Sea.

So the common thing in the film is the Sea that divides the two continents, Europe and Africa. This film sets around that region about the people who depended on it for the living, growing up and looking for the fresh life start. But the majority of those who saw it recognise only the refugees who cross the sea. That's wrong to label this film is about the refugees. Around 20-25 per cent of the film concentrated on that issue. Only about their struggle on their journey to the other side, but it reveals nothing on its root cause. If you ask me, I would say only one religion making all this mess in the middle-east, otherwise you won't see the western army in that region.

Some of the clips, the real ones are really disturbing. I won't blame those people who took such risk to get the other side of the sea. Believe me, I'm not a nationalist, so I won't believe in borders and regions that divided over language and ethnicity base. But I do mind the religious. If that was eradicated from the earth's surface, particularly one that's causing all the trouble immediately, we can co-exist peacefully. That's the major issue here, but we're after temporary solution. The film does not say all this, but you will get the clear picture.

"The ships fired rockets and at sea. It was like there was fire at sea."

For me this was an average film. I have seen the much better documentaries than this on various issues of the world. The filmmakers don't want to take sides, so they only revealed the truth by just following and making videos of life in and around the Mediterranean Sea. Like I meantioned earlier, some of the angles do not make any sense or difficult to understand its purpose. I don't know the others, but I have got plenty of questions about the film to ask the filmmakers. If you are like me, welcome aboard.

It was the Italian entry for the 2017 Oscars and it did not make, but found a slot in the list of Best Documentary Feature. This is the first out of five from that category I have seen, so I don't know whether it wins the award or not, but as per the prediction made by film fanatics and critics, this is the frontrunner.

Whatever the result would be, I'm not recommending it particularly the common people. Because the film fails to narrate the story which is very essential from the average peoples' perspective to get the message clear and loud. All one can get with this is only the outline on the very important issue at the moment. Remember how the David Attenborough's narration made to reach all the corners of the earth. Confusing over the purpose of the documentary, possibly misleading. Its like watching a news channel on the mute mode. Otherwise, this should have been one of the best of its kind.

5/10

If you're looking for lots of action, snappy dialogue, or even a coherent storyline then this film is probably not for you. It relies on quiet atmospherics to tell its story about the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. It juxtaposes the lives of some of its citizens with the constant arrival of desperate migrants, who have been picked up at sea by the Italian Navy and brought to Lampedusa for initial processing.

These migrants begin their harrowing and treacherous sea journey from the coast of Africa heading towards Italy, and, per the movie, some 15,000 of them have died trying in their attempts for a better life. Some of the scenes in the film are truly heartbreaking, and when a local doctor reveals some of the horrific things he must face in his profession it is unforgettable.

Director Gianfranco Rosi has chosen to tell his story in rather a quiet and existential way, which I found quite fascinating but it certainly won't appeal to everyone. If this topic interests you, I saw a movie last year called "Mediterranea" which depicts the journey of the migrants in more detail and follows up with their arrival in mainland Italy.