Lampedusa

As the most southern island off the coast of Italy, Lampedusa is relatively close to Africa. This is where Zakaria got stranded – a Somali journalist who fled his country because of the war. He escaped that, but on Lampedusa he wrestles with fears and existential questions. Here he meets Giulia, an ageing woman facing a personal crisis on the same island. Together and separately, they try to get a grip on life.
Just as in his earlier, experimental documentaries, Schreiner films in high-contrast black-and-white. His powerful shots implicitly have a lot to say about Lampedusa, from the wide sea and deserted rocky coastline to fences against refugees and the harbour, where many lives come together. Alongside familiar themes, Schreiner’s hybrid documentary also contains dreamy, associative scenes in which time gets played with regularly and supplely. The interior monologue of the protagonists is, despite being abstract, surprisingly often universal.