Island of the Hungry Ghosts

Ethereal, intensely moving.

It’s a humane, compassionate film, simultaneously full of beauty, sadness and struggle.

The film is a haunting portrait of the island as a purgatorial realm between the poles of isolation and liberation.

Nonetheless, Island of the Hungry Ghosts casts an undeniably hypnotic spell. The documentary also serves as an important reminder that the United States is far from alone in mistreating its would-be immigrants.

The film is as much an exploration of often contradictory human attitudes towards migration as it is towards the experiences of the refugees themselves.

By refusing to illuminate the detainees’ stories or the humanitarian crisis—not widely reported enough for Brady to take the audience’s familiarity as a given—they are trapped inside, The Island of Hungry Ghosts relegates itself to being little more than a pretty but wispy curiosity that fails its beleaguered subjects.