Screening | En Route to Europe, We Burn or Die

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh

In the port city town of Zarzis in Tunisia, the sea has always been a space of mobility. However, with Fortress Europe entrenching its sea walls and extending proxy borders into North and West Africa by sponsoring local coercive apparatuses, illegalized and irregularized travelers engaging in migration as a means to overcome political, economic and social marginalization while looking for better opportunities face more and more violence and risk. The documentary film based on extensive fieldwork tells the stories of individuals who are navigating precarity while impacted in various ways by the production as well as the securitization-policing of deadliest border control across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. Through interviews in and around Zarzis, the film explores the experiences, journeys, opinions and motivations of African migrants – Tunisians and other nationals – as well as the neoliberal structures that make their travels so dangerous