Human Flow (2017)

Human Flow is director and artist Ai Weiwei's detailed and heartbreaking exploration into the global refugee crisis.

Director:

Weiwei Ai (as Ai Weiwei)

Writers:

Chin-Chin Yap, Tim Finch

Stars:

Israa Abboud, Hiba Abed, Rami Abu Sondos

6 wins & 12 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Israa Abboud	...	Herself
Hiba Abed	...	Herself
Rami Abu Sondos	...	Himself
Weiwei Ai	...	Himself (as Ai Weiwei)
Fadi Abou Akleh	...	Himself
Yamama Al-Awaad	...	Herself
Asmaa Al-Bahiyya	...	Herself
Eman Al-Masina	...	Herself
Maya Ameratunga	...	Herself
Amir	...	Himself
Hanan Ashrawi	...	Interviewee
Orlando Avis	...	Himself
Peter Bouckaert	...	Himself
Sukriye Cetin	...	Himself
Tanya Chapuisat	...	Herself

Storyline

Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. Human Flow is a witness to its subjects and their desperate search for safety, shelter and justice: from teeming refugee camps to perilous ocean crossings to barbed-wire borders; from dislocation and disillusionment to courage, endurance and adaptation; from the haunting lure of lives left ...

---

Taglines:

"There is no refugee crisis, only a human crisis." - Ai Weiwei

---

Genres:

Documentary

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for thematic material including a disturbing image

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official Site

Country:

Germany USA China Palestine France

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 October 2017 (USA)

Also Known As:

Marea humana

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$45,677, 15 October 2017, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$527,845, 21 December 2017

Company Credits

Production Co:

24 Media Production Company, AC Films, Ai Weiwei Studio

Technical Specs

Runtime:

140 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In 1976, Ai and his family were allowed to return from exile and soon after, Ai explored a path in the arts and enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy.

User Reviews

Missed opportunity

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.