Description:

Brûle la Mer (Burn the Sea)
(Maki Berchache and Nathalie Nambot, 2014, France, 35mm, 75 min.)
In French and Arabic with English subtitles
The 2011 collapse of the Ben Ali government in Tunisia prompted a mass exodus of so-called harragas (literally, “border burners”) to Europe. One of these migrants was a young hospitality worker, Maki Berchache, who collaborated with French filmmaker and activist Nathalie Nambot on this poetic and intimate experimental documentary. Shooting on Super-8 and 16mm film, Berchache and Nambot gather together the memories, reflections, dreams and fears of the migrant community in France, imagining cinema as a space of connection and collective practice within an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile landscape.