The Rest

• Ai Weiwei
• 79 min
• China, Germany
• 2019
• Documentary

Europe during the refugee crisis, depicted almost uncomfortable up close – scathingly but with humanism and pathos – by Chinese artist-in-exile Ai Weiwei.

In a time when media coverage and public interest seems to have waned, Ai Weiwei returns to refugee camps and transit docks in Lampedusa, Idomeni and Calais where desperate refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Africa are treated like cattle, and basic principles about human rights seem to have been put on hold. Ai Weiwei (the subject of a GFF retrospective in 2012) has condensed 900 hours of footage into an unsentimental and perceptive 79-minute summary of the still urgent state of things, centred around the experiences and powerful tales of individual refugees. The Rest is a profoundly human defence of the rights of these people to live in dignity.

- Johan Blomqvist