The New Yorker Documentary
News

Lifeboat

Volunteers from a German nonprofit risk the waves of the Mediterranean to pluck refugees from sinking rafts, which had set out from Libya, in the middle of the night. Directed and Produced by Skye Fitzgerald and Bryn Mooser "Lifeboat" was nominated for an 2019 Academy Award nomination in the category of Documentary Short Subject.

Released on 1/7/2019

Credits

Starring: Skye Fitzgerald and Bryn Mooser

Transcript

00:00
[fast film reeling]
00:04
[loud wind whistling]
00:10
[ominous music] [loud wind whistling]
00:53
[footsteps crunching]
01:04
[speaking in foreign language]
01:24
[ominous music]
01:30
[speaking in foreign language]
01:35
[ominous music]
01:48
[speaking in foreign language]
01:52
[footsteps crunching]
01:59
[ominous music]
02:02
[speaking in foreign language]
02:14
[ominous music]
02:23
[speaking in foreign language]
02:24
[feet crunching rhythmically]
02:30
[ominous music]
02:54
[speaking in foreign language]
02:59
[ominous music]
03:14
[slow dramatic music]
03:23
[Female Newscaster] Another tragedy in the Mediterranean,
03:25
about 200 migrants trying to cross the sea
03:28
fell over board earlier this week.
03:30
[Male Newscaster] More than 4,600 people have drowned
03:33
or gone missing this year.
03:35
[High Pitched FemaleNewscaster] Newscaster] Desperate people
03:36
from Syria, Africa, and India;
03:38
the boat sank less than 10 miles off Libya's coast.
03:41
[Low Pitched FemaleNewscaster] Newscaster] People are risking
03:42
their lives to sail from North Africa to Europe.
03:44
[Newscaster Woman] The migrants were fleeing
03:45
poverty and war in Sudan and Somalia.
03:48
[Low Pitched Male Newscaster] As many as 900 migrants
03:50
were said to be on board, only a hand full survived.
03:53
[Hoarse Male Newscaster] Three shipwrecks
03:54
in just three days claimed 700 lives.
03:58
[Woman Newscaster] It's just the most recent tragedy
03:59
involving migrants trying to reach Europe.
04:02
[ominous music]
04:40
[waves splashing rhythmically]
05:10
To suddenly get a mass migration of millions
05:14
is a big shock to any system.
05:22
We've got a lot of people in trouble
05:25
in these terrible little boats.
05:27
And those boats aren't gonna last very long out there.
05:40
I've worked for 22 years hunting whalers at sea.
05:47
Hunting the hunters.
05:51
But I know the hunters in me a bit too.
05:55
Like when we're looking for these rubber for instance.
06:03
It's a bit like a hunter.
06:09
[waves lapping sporadically]
06:31
Here is the boarder of Tunisia over here, Libya here.
06:39
Occasionally we go over for fuel somewhere over there.
06:44
We've got a 12 mile line here, drawn.
06:49
And a 24 mile.
06:54
And the Libyan authoritial, whoever are the authorities,
07:00
they like to think
07:01
that 24 miles is their zone, inside there.
07:06
So normally we stay outside 24 miles.
07:11
And we've got a beach here, Sabrata,
07:16
that's where all the boats have been coming from.
07:24
[loud motor humming]
07:36
[speaking in foreign language]
08:34
[water splashing rhythmically]
09:03
[muffled radio talking]
09:07
We found another row boat, 0-1-2 degrees,
09:12
35 minutes east.
09:14
Is there another one though? Yes.
09:17
[speaking in foreign language] Okay.
09:18
So there might be a second one.
09:21
One is a, oh no, three, now we have three.
09:25
Contact, now we have three. [muffled radio talking]
09:31
[Announcer] Stay calm in the boat,
09:33
we'll help you as soon as possible.
09:36
[loud motor revving]
09:42
[muffled radio talking]
09:47
[speaking in foreign language]
09:52
Okay my friends.
09:55
We will start to give you life vests.
09:59
We will put it to the back
10:01
and you will give it to the front.
10:04
These, are not enough, but we have 700 on our boat,
10:08
so everything is nice.
10:10
It's very important that everyone has one, stay calm.
10:16
Don't try to jump over, we will get you soon,
10:20
everything will be okay.
10:22
[speaking in foreign language]
10:24
So I'm very sorry I can't offer you now water
10:27
but you will need some time.
10:28
You are safe, tomorrow you will [murmurs] okay.
10:35
Okay first the outside. Stay on the boat.
10:38
[muffled talking]
10:44
[speaking in foreign language]
11:06
[Blonde Man] This one, at least 1,000 people.
11:08
[Man On Radio] On board?
11:10
And still 200 to go on the wooden boat.
11:13
Still 700, it's more than our capacity, over.
11:18
[Brown Haired Man] Don't jump, stay on the boat,
11:20
stay on the boat.
11:27
[ominous music]
11:42
[High Pitched Man] We're gonna calm them down,
11:43
then distribute life vests.
11:45
But we're gonna need to assist.
11:46
[speaking in foreign language]
11:50
Okay, what we do
11:50
is first we deliver the life jackets to the wooden boat
11:53
as fast as possible
11:54
and then we see what we can do to the rubber boats, okay.
12:01
If the spot is calm, that's where we're taking people.
12:04
Try that, okay.
12:11
Hey, hey, back, back, back, back.
12:17
[Brown Haired Man] Please go back to your boat,
12:19
stay on your boat.
12:21
That's very very important.
12:24
[speaking in foreign language]
12:28
[ominous music]
12:34
[speaking in foreign language]
12:42
[Blonde Man] Okay we have more now unconscious people.
12:45
We have one dead body,
12:46
we need urgently assistance to disembark the people
12:49
otherwise they die.
12:51
[ominous music]
13:13
We have space upstairs for at least two or three shuttles.
13:18
[Man On Radio] There's a couple of pregnant ladies.
13:20
And then with stomach pains.
13:22
And then we're gonna prep for them and heat stroke.
13:26
[muffled talking]
13:31
[loud water splashing]
13:36
[Hoarse Man On Radio] Rest of this direction
13:36
we have three more boats.
13:39
[Blonde Man] And this is the rubber boat, right, this one?
13:43
We have a bit left space.
13:47
We will take babies and mamas of the babies.
13:52
[Man On Radio] We've got two very pregnant ladies.
13:55
Who have to go on the first ship.
13:58
[Man] We tried to get them over
14:00
but they won't transfer at the moment.
14:01
The Gardio Costara is totally full, over.
14:05
[Brown Haired Man] Stand by, I'm speaking with our doctor
14:06
'cause we have one doctor and one nurse
14:10
for 1,000 people.
14:12
So we have a lot of problems.
14:14
So it depends, this type of problem...
14:18
[Blonde Man] We also have maybe six rubber boats.
14:20
[Low Pitched Man] Our life boat is approaching.
14:23
Do we take out the children and the women?
14:31
[loud water splashing rhythmically]
14:40
[loud painful weeping]
15:10
[loud child screaming]
15:18
[Frantic Man] Come on, come on, come on.
15:28
[speaking in foreign language]
15:29
We'll take of it.
15:30
Do you have pain anywhere, sir?
15:31
Open your eyes, open your eyes, look at me.
15:35
Do you have pain anywhere?
15:38
No? [ominous music]
16:07
[speaking in foreign language]
16:18
[ominous music]
16:25
[speaking in foreign language]
17:05
[ominous music]
17:38
[speaking in foreign language]
17:51
[ominous music]
17:56
[speaking in foreign language]
18:06
[ominous music]
18:29
[speaking in foreign language]
18:42
[ominous music]
18:47
[speaking in foreign language]
19:03
[ominous music]
19:14
[speaking in foreign language]
19:26
[ominous music]
19:29
[speaking in foreign language]
19:49
[ominous music]
20:35
[speaking in foreign language]
20:44
[ominous music]
20:45
[speaking in foreign language]
20:58
[ominous music]
21:26
When I read about the political state of the world
21:30
or the environmental state of the world
21:34
and it's all going to hell in a handcart.
21:38
[ominous music]
21:50
So maybe the hope in the humans is some totally mad
21:53
irrational thing we got.
21:56
[muffled talking]
21:59
But we got it anyway.
22:02
[ominous music]
22:17
You know rationalities is wildly overplayed, here.
22:22
The brain and the mind, yeah it's a useful tool
22:27
but the heart is where your real thinking comes.
22:31
[ominous music]
24:27
[Man On Radio] How many people are in the bottom boat?
24:30
[Blonde Man] All together 240 on this ship.
24:35
[Man On Radio] 2-4-0, so stand by
24:38
because I'm going to speak with MRTC,
24:42
but at the moment all the ship,
24:45
I repeat all the ship are over crowded.
24:52
[loud wind whooshing] [muffled conversation]
25:32
[Jon] Who knows what's gonna happen to them.
25:37
A lot of cases, not a terribly nice life.
25:42
But we can only do what we can do.
25:46
So we might well confront upsetting things like this.
25:53
As long as we rescue some people, that's worth doing.
26:04
[loud child crying] [distant motor humming]
26:23
[speaking in foreign language]
26:30
[loud child crying]
26:42
[Rescuer] The blankets please,
26:43
collect the blankets please.
26:45
[muffled talking]
26:55
[loud motor revving]
27:00
[dramatic music]
27:37
The further away you are from a problem with humans,
27:43
the easier it is to rationalize
27:45
and to see them as a problem.
27:48
[dramatic music]
27:53
The closer you get to the problem
27:55
like a car crash or something,
27:58
then it's not just a mass of people
27:59
then they are separating into individuals.
28:05
And then they've actually got different expressions
28:08
on their faces.
28:10
[dramatic music]
28:19
Then you have to start dealing with them as people
28:24
and then your heart starts operating more then your head.
28:31
And your heart tells the truth when you listen to it.
28:35
[dramatic music]
28:42
I'm sure one more turn of the historical cycle
28:45
and our countries will be the very poor countries
28:49
and we'll be the hoards of unemployed people
28:54
not wanted, not cared about, the riff-raff.
29:03
We could be those people.
29:08
In the end, we have to remember
29:14
that those are our fellows.
29:16
[dramatic music]
29:42
[loud water splashing sporadically]
29:59
[loud wind whooshing]
30:21
[speaking in foreign language]
30:35
[ominous music]
30:45
[speaking in foreign language]
30:47
[loud wind whooshing]
30:51
[speaking in foreign language]
30:55
[loud engine revving]
31:09
[ominous music]
31:50
[loud engine revving]
32:09
[dramatic music]
32:39
[ominous music]