LES MESSAGERS

“Where are all those people who left and never arrived?” Be it the Moroccan fishermen who regularly find lifeless bodies or the parish register where a French priest notes down as best he can the origin of the deceased, Les Messagers positions itself on the fine divide that separates living migrants from those who have died. Crossing the Sahara on foot, arriving safe and sound in the enclaves of Ceuta or Melilla and finding oneself “trapped” in Morocco: this is often the obstacle-ridden path of physical and mental resilience spent to no avail, in the same vein as Stéphanie Régnier’s portrait film Kelly (2013 Young Jury Award). Here, the editing alternates interviews with a chief of the Spanish Guardia Civil (about the hi-tech barrier that “doesn’t harm the migrants”) and the accounts – poignant in their density and sobriety – of migrants who speak for their unlucky travelling companions, who drowned or were shot at their side. The focus on the unburied dead challenges Europe’s phantom role. Which shows that, in some ways, the notion of frontier covers that of a common grave: a crack engulfing a surplus of humanity whose only relics seem to be the words of the “messengers”.

Charlotte Garson