80
Fire at Sea is a film that expertly plays with contrasting moments and themes.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
Fire at Sea initiates a narrative that probes the fundamental gap between wanting to help and actually being able to do so.
80
Time Out London by Dave Calhoun
The film's quietly angry plea is for compassion, understanding and more than one eye open on this modern horror.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Where journalism leaves off, Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) begins. It takes a unique documentary filmmaker like Gianfranco Rosi to capture the drama through the periscope of his camera focused on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
50
The Film Stage by Giovanni Marchini Camia
While Rosi certainly manages to jolt the viewer out of complacency, his strategy towards this end is so ethically dubious as to border on repellent.
90
Screen International by Lee Marshall
[A] powerful, at times shocking but also intensely human documentary.
100
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Fire at Sea is masterly film-making.
70
Rosi has long been drawn to quiet lives, but has never been quite so successful in conveying the soulful qualities he sees in them to his audience — until now, using the oblique approach of Lampedusa’s residents to spotlight this growing international crisis, while using his young protagonist’s obliviousness to reflect and indict our own.
The film's silent "show not tell" style can be read as a sharp indictment of the moral and political apathy surrounding the migrant crisis as Rosi juxtaposes the daily lives of migrants with those of locals.