Human Flow

The topic of Human Flow is not something that will give you a good feeling after watching this documentary. Massive human migration caused by wars and persecutions it's something that exists since the dawn of time but with the always increasing overpopulation of our planet it now becomes a real problem as some countries just can't handle such massive numbers of refugees. This documentary is heartbreaking and should be shown to all the right extremists in the world, so that their narrow brain maybe could understand that those people fled their country by necessity, and not to take your job or whatsoever. Most of them if not all of them would prefer staying in their countries if it was not bombed to shreds. The documentary is very well shot, with interesting angles and different stories, mostly sad as the situation is just desperate. I don't see a bright future for the next generation, overpopulation and mass migrations will cause the downfall of mother earth. Director Weiwei Ai did a good job with his documentary but I'm afraid that it won't make much difference. Big up to all the people that try to help others and this daily.

No commentary and no background but lots of shots of Ai Wei Wei looking for a spot in the limelight of other people's sad escapes from poverty, war, starvation and desperation. If every cent of profit is put back into helping or offering hope, then I might return to this sad tale.

If you are European like me, this film will open your eyes on the migration events that you read on the news everyday. Europe has missed to create a right way to approach these migrations and now is panicking. I don't see a bright future for it. Great film, that gives you a large overview that many other films are unable to give.

In a documentary which is by it's very definition supposed to span the global refugee problem this documentary spends all of 5 of its 240 minutes in Africa. It visits one refugee camp in Kenya and a boat of arriving Eritreans (granted this scene is exceptionally powerful). Oh and a couple of shots of 'Africans' in Southern Italy but Ai Wen Wen doesn't bother to give them a nationality, an ethnicity, or a voice.

Two of the five largest refugee populations by country of origin come from Africa. Most counts place more than half of the top ten countries on the continent. By host country, African nations again dwarf European and some Middle Eastern ones.

Like Gaza and Lebanon, some countries host refugees for generations. The world's longest running refugee camps both exist in Kenya. The vast majority of these people are displaced by conflict and yet Human Flow seeks to explain away the African refugee climate to the unpolitical cause of climate change.

The platform is enormous, and yet in a documentary that seeks to highlight complexity, misses an enormous opportunity to tell the many diverse and complex African refugee stories.

The film is way too long and indulgent of the director's need to insert himself. But the message is far too important to ignore. Watch it anyway.