Those Who Jump

A tiny piece of Europe on the African continent holds a strong pull for African refugees. Morocco shares a border with Melilla, one of two Spanish coastal cities in northern Africa. On Mount Gurugu, which looks down on the city, hundreds of refugees, primarily from sub-Saharan Africa, live in a temporary camp as they repeatedly attempt to cross into Europe. Tantalizingly close, the border is entirely circumscribed by a series of fences watched over by border police and surveillance cameras. Filmmakers Moritz Siebert and Estephan Wagner gave a camera to one of the refugees, Malian Abou Bakar Sidibé, and invited him to document daily life in the camp. His personal footage—of police raids, discussions of camp politics, a soccer rivalry, searching for food, a performance of an autobiographical rap song—creates what Variety critic Jay Weissberg called “one of the most authentic films on this highly charged topic.” Sidibé himself says, “I feel I exist when I film.”