). For three years, Sylvain George filmed undocumented immigrants from Northern Africa and the Middle East living in makeshift homes in the northern French port town of Calais. Their moods slip from hope to despair as they encounter institutionalized intolerance and racism. George places the refugees' marginal existence center stage, filming the rituals of their exile-bathing, singing, eating, dodging the police-with a sympathetic immediacy, part verité, part poetry. “I make the films I want to see, films that I feel are an emergency; they are necessary,” George has stated.