Europe's New Faces

Through form and function, Abbas demonstrates the ironic and contradictory nature of his very enterprise, as the temporal fixity of the photograph clashes with the persistent movement of a migrant constantly pulled in multiple directions.

What Sam Abbas, as director, cinematographer and editor, does here is to disarmingly present the situation in snippets that give the audience all the details of crossing from Libya to Italy, including elements both harrowing and mundane. In so doing, he engenders empathy and understanding for these displaced people and their struggle, taking a humanist approach rather than an abstract one.

Europe’s New Faces is a worthy exercise to pull back the curtain on the experience, but it should perhaps be edited down to 90 minutes or so and include some framing context so we know who and what we are seeing and why the migrants chose to make this trip.

The lack of story, structure, or any clear editorial principle is a serious impediment to empathy for these poor, struggling people; the 159-minute runtime feels like four years.