The film recounts the epic journey of two young men from a small village in Senegal who make their journey across Africa through myriad dangers in pursuit of a dream called Europe.

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In the words of the director Matteo Garrone ‘We began by listening to the actual accounts of those people who had survived this infernal ordeal and we decided to orient the camera from their perspective so as to tell this contemporary odyssey from their point of view, offering a sort of reverse shot compared to the images we are used to seeing from our Western perspective, in an attempt to give a voice to those who don’t usually have one.

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So many people who have made this journey were involved in the making of this film. It made me understand the injustice from the inside. I felt an empathy with them in the age of technology, phones and instant news….a desire to discover the world.

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I think it is important that this film is about violence but also about hope. There is death but there is also life.

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The cast were non-professional and Garrone’s words again “I didn’t show the script to the boys in advance, they didn’t know if their characters were going to succeed to arrive at their dream destination or not”. The film mirrored the dream of both boys who longed to go to Europe and the States and will be released in twenty African countries …which is very unusual ….who knows what effect that will have when audiences see what risks are involved when making the life changing journey.

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Annie Cartland