It Will Be Chaos: A Review

It Will Be Chaos

Directed by Luciana Luciano and Filippo Piscopo

Screened at Cinema Nova, Carlton, as part of the Transitions Film Festival: Visions for a Better World

In the opening shot of It Will Be Chaos the camera pans down from a crane as two coffins slowly emerge from the back of a lorry. They are strapped precariously to a wooden pallet and are being loaded onto a docked ship. There is an agitated crowd gathered around and the atmosphere is febrile. Some of the crowd are arguing. Some are angry that the bodies are being removed too soon while others say that the removal is necessary as there are too many bodies to cope with. Others are simply collapsing in grief. We are witnessing the immediate aftermath of the 2013 disaster in which over 300 migrants perished off the coast of the small Italian island of Lampedusa. The arguments over how to manage the dead prefigure the wider tensions between arriving migrants and local and national authorities that will play out over the course of the film.

It Will Be Chaos is a documentary by Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo that follows the stories of different refugees as they journey into Europe via Italy and the Balkan Corridor in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Aregai is originally from Eritrea, where he is fleeing repression, and is a survivor of the 2013 Lampedusa disaster. Like other survivors, rather than being processed as a refugee he is initially detained under Italy’s controversial ‘Bossi-Fini Law’ which treats unauthorised entry into Italy as a criminal offence. As the Mayor of Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, critically says to the camera, Italy’s border regime is designed to push people back rather than receive them. The exasperation of local politicians in the face of under-resourced support for refugees recurs in the documentary as Aregai and others are temporarily housed in the isolated small town of Riace.

Aregai has family and companions who died in the Lampedusa disaster and he shows their photographs to the camera while stoically describing how the boat capsized off the coast. Throughout the film Aregai maintains a calm demeanour despite the tragedy and uncertainty that follows him. His legal status changes throughout the film – from facing criminal charges over ‘illegal’ entry, to going ‘underground’, to obtaining eventual refugee status. At one point, Aregai is brought into court as a witness in the trial against the suspected ‘captain’ of the boat that capsized. As Aregai remarks, acting as a witness in the trial means he is simply subject to further detainment rather than freedom. The question of whether Aregai is more of a prisoner than a refugee hangs over his journey through Italy.

Following the initial scenes in Lampedusa and the introduction of Aregai, the documentary then cuts to Izmir, Turkey, where Wael Orfahli and his wife and four children await a phone call from a smuggler who is organising their illicit boat journey to Greece. The Orfahli family have fled their home in Damascus, following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. Wael’s stress is palpable. Not only must he be ready at a moment’s notice, the journey might also be cancelled at a moment’s notice. They must also prepare for encounters with the police and possible rough seas. Theirs is a staged journey to Germany, through the different countries of the Balkan Corridor. There are seas and borders to cross, trains and buses to catch and a young family to look after en route.

The journeys of Aregai and the Orfahli family are interspersed with footage and interviews with others along the way. Perhaps most moving are the accounts of the 2013 Lampedusa disaster provided by the local fishermen who were the first to arrive at the scene. They are clearly traumatised by what unfolded and are struck down by guilt over not being able to save more lives. One of the fishermen admits that he is unable to return to his boat following the event. More troubling is footage from anti-migrant political rallies in Italy which foreshadow the rise of the populist and right-wing coalition government in Italy in 2018.

It may be useful to compare It Will be Chaos to Gianfranco Rosi’s 2016 film Fire at Sea. While It Will be Chaos brings personal stories to the fore, Rosi’s documentary juxtaposes scenes of daily life on Lampedusa with scenes from the continuing human tragedy on its shores. In Fire at Sea two worlds coexist, but in extreme separation. Lampedusa is at once a detention centre and a family home. It is a briny graveyard alongside a shore on which children play and people work. These blunt juxtapositions occur without narrative arcs or narration. It’s a sort of ‘dialectical theatre’ – in the manner of Bertolt Brecht – transferred to cinema, where the impetus is on the audience to make sense of the contrasting images, both ethically and politically.

It Will Be Chaos is not nearly as innovative in terms of form as Fire at Sea and subsequently may not be as thought-provoking or demanding on the viewer. Yet, this does not mean it is not engaging. And perhaps one of the lasting impressions left by the film is through its closing texts. We are reminded that the 2013 Lampedusa disaster was only one of many tragedies on the Mediterranean Sea. Over 18,000 people are estimated to have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe between 2011 and 2018. And by late 2015, the film reminds us, Eastern European borders were being closed to incoming refugees. The Balkan Corridor was effectively being shut down. This began only five months after the Orfahli family completed their journey. Today, in 2019, their story would pan out very differently.

Europe has tightened its borders. It has struck deals with neighbouring nations such as Turkey and mooted plans for the external processing of refugees. And the current, populist government in Italy has continued to refuse safe harbour to ships carrying stranded migrants, among other things. In this context, the stories of Aregai and the Orfahli family remain important. They offer snapshots of resilience in the face of tribulation and struggle, even if the trauma of war and political repression cannot be fully shaken off, ever. Wael Orfahli feels lonely and alienated in his new life in Germany. He misses his past, pre-Civil War life in Damascus – a life which no longer exists. Yet, he holds out hope for his young children. “We had a good life. Now it’s the kid’s turn”, he says. Aregai now lives in Stockholm after gaining refugee status in Sweden and works as a chef in a refugee reception centre. He returns to Lampedusa every year to honour those who perished in the disaster in 2013. The lives of the Orfahli family and Aregai are accompanied by grief and loss at the same time as they open out to a brighter future. The questions that must be posed to the viewer – as witness to their stories – is how many other lives have been cut short with impunity or brought to a standstill in refugee camps at the entrance of Europe and whether or not our border regimes, which are designed to push people back rather than receive them, are worth this human cost?