Of shipwrecks and Weddings: Borders and Mobilities in Europe

This essay proposes a new visual politics of Europe’s borders that
foregrounds encounters and trespassings. It focuses on the analysis of
two films that have received wide international acclaim: On the Bride’s
Side (2013) and Fuocoammare (2015). The films deal with migration
as a humanitarian crisis but are not simple acts of denunciation. They
are also not straightforward documentaries but offer innovative
visual registers that defy categorization into fixed genres, such as
the road movie or observational documentary. On the Bride’s Side
uses the format of a travelling wedding party that disregards both
legislation restricting free mobility in Europe and the cynicism about
the hopelessness of the migrant condition. The film was realized
through an online crowdfunding campaign unprecedented in Italy.
Fuocoammare presents the tragedy of Lampedusa outside of the
regular schemes and screens, combining the migrant drama with the
ordinary lives of people on the island, mostly through the perspective
of a 12-year-old boy, Samuele, whose lazy eye becomes a metaphor for
the short-sightedness of Europe. Both films propose a new aesthetic
of the border, forging new imaginaries for Europe where spaces of
solidarity and cosmopolitanism are still possible.