Human Flow

2017 "When there is nowhere to go, nowhere is home."
7.2| 2h20m| en
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More than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war, the greatest displacement since World War II. Filmmaker Ai Weiwei examines the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Over the course of one year in 23 countries, Weiwei follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretch across the globe, including Afghanistan, France, Greece, Germany and Iraq.

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Reviews

Protraph Lack of good storyline.
Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some
Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
info-32852 The film is way too long and indulgent of the director's need to insert himself. But the message is far too important to ignore. Watch it anyway.
marypianka No commentary and no background but lots of shots of Ai Wei Wei looking for a spot in the limelight of other people's sad escapes from poverty, war, starvation and desperation. If every cent of profit is put back into helping or offering hope, then I might return to this sad tale.
proud_luddite The current global refugee crisis is the focus of this German documentary as the viewer witnesses the lives of migrants in motion, stuck in places they didn't expect to be, and their overall despair. The areas of migration include the Middle East, central Africa, and Myanmar.Director Ai Weiwei does a very skillful job in letting the camera do the work to make the most profound statements as silently as possible. This includes superb aerial shots of massive crowds struggling in strange surroundings. Luckily, it's not all misery in some cases such as children who continue to play - oblivious to their situation; and even a few adults finding optimism.At two and a third hours, the film is overly long despite its noble efforts in concentrating on as many migrations and refugee camps as possible. It might have reduced some of these sequences and spent extra time on the difficulties some migrants have had fitting into their new countries outside of refugee camps. Similarly, more time could have been spent on the history of migration though that of World War II was mentioned.Similar documentaries that take on the world's worst ills finish with at least a smidgen of hope without seeming naïve. Sadly, "Human Flow" cannot as the populations of refugees continue to accelerate. But the film at least succeeds in giving the viewer a human look at what is presently a living hell for many. The only thing that is worse is what not could be filmed safely: the living hell the refugees left behind.
narvnamm I saw this today after having heard Ai Weiwei speak a few weeks ago at the Cooper Union about this film and his NYC project of fence sculptures around the city.The film documents the plight of global displacement of humans due to unprecedented civil strife and climate disaster - displacing more people than WW2.It was a bit long but, in fact, that was probably a strategy to mirror the enormity of the problem.Not moralising, more show than tell, I respect this method of documentary making.Thank you.