Best Feature Documentary 2019 Winner

Trace

Public accounts on the 2015 European refugee crisis covered the issue through an individualizing gaze placed on the refugee subject. The refugee in suffering, an experience witnessed by us all, as a spectacle, from the distance: Images of crowded tents, boats caring overflowing numbers of people, children dying on Mediterranean shores. "Trace" turns the gaze outwards, scrutinizing the “space” of the crisis in which people seek refuge. On the one hand, there is the everyday of the “space.” The ordinary Greek island life with not much to do in the early hours of the day, with people anchoring their fishing boats, some going for a swim, some strolling for a walk. On the other hand, the island space changed from hosting refugees’ presence to hosting their absence. Trace figuratively marks the absence of the refugee crisis by symbolically creating a visual topography of the space containing the crisis, and juxtaposed to narrative accounts of people involved in the crisis.