Italiano
Mediterraneo – The Law of the Sea (Mediterráneo) by Marcel Barrena, distributed by Adler Entertainment, will be released in Italian cinemas on Thursday, February 3rd, 2022.
The film, that brings on the big screen the incredible true story of Òscar Camps, the founder of “Open Arms”, won the “FS People’s Choice Award” at the sixteenth edition of the Rome Film Fest.
SYNOPSIS
Autumn 2015. Two Spanish lifeguards, Òscar and Gerard, travel to the island of Lesbos after seeing the heart-wrenching photograph of a little boy drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and discover a shocking reality: thousands of people risking their lives every day by trying to cross the sea in the most precarious of vessels, fleeing from armed conflicts and other miseries in their home countries. But the thing that stands out most is that no one is doing any rescue work. Together with Esther, Nico and other membersof the team, they will fight to do the job that none of the authorities are doing and provide support to the thousands of people who so badly need it. Based on the true story of Òscar Camps, the founder of Open Arms.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
In September 2015, the world was shaken by the photograph of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on the shores of the Mediterranean. That image changed the life of Oscar Camps, a lifeguard in Badalona. He convinced his friend Gerard Canals to go to Lesbos to see what was happening there. What started out as a two-day trip would turn into a mission that would last for months, one that, to date, has saved the lives of over 60,000 people. After seeing that photo, Oscar dropped everything to save many refugees from certain death and expose what was going on. But what could I do? I’m not a lifeguard, but I could make a film to give visibility to a situation playing out only a two-hour flight away from where I live. We worked on Lesbos for four years, trying to understand that situation firsthand and hammer out a project during which we faced the unimaginable. We filmed in the real offices of the Open Arms rescuers. We reconstructed the refugee camp in Moria and hired hundreds of walk-ons from among the refugees themselves. Neither the film, nor I have the answers to stop what is happening in the Mediterranean, but we can serve as an amplifier so that no one will forget what is happening on our shores.
