I, like many Americans who consume the news, am no stranger to the international refugee crisis. With continuous violence and oppressive governments around the world, every day, thousands of people are making the brave decision to leave their homes and seek a livelihood somewhere else. But even with a conscious effort to follow the news, those of us looking at immigration from the outside never really get to connect with the people embarking on these journeys. Oftentimes, we speak with them once they’re settled in a new country or we see the grief on their relatives’ faces when their journey is not completed.
Directed by Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo, It Will Be Chaos follows the lives of immigrants navigating the refugee crisis across the Mediterranean. Luciano and Piscopo take their cameras into the homes and lives of Eritrean Aregai and the Syrian Orfahli family.
Aregai, a former military officer and prison guard, is in the homestretch of his escape from native Eritrea. After living in Sudan for three years, Aregai finally made it onto a smuggling boat with his cousins that would cross the Mediterranean to mainland Europe. But Aregai and his relatives faced an all too common reality on a boat with hundreds of people and faulty electric wiring. The boat malfunctioned and capsized, killing over 300 Eritreans and Somalis. Aregai, with the loss of his cousins, is one of the few survivors who was rescued by Italian fishermen and landed on the island Lampedusa to await trial after being charged with illegal immigration. With little help from Italy, Aregai is eventually granted asylum and resettles as a cook in a Stockholm refugee kitchen.
The Syrian Orfahli family is composed of Wael, Doha, their four young children, and Wael’s nephew who are living in Turkey after escaping from their home in Damascus. The family makes a 24-day trek from Turkey through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, and Austria to Germany where they meet Wael’s brother and eventually resettle outside of Hanover.
The best part of the film is that it brings the viewer into the homes and lives of refugees. Viewers are taken beyond the usual news stories. Instead, they are with Aregai and the Orfahlis as they cross borders and deal with various governments, even if the five-year timeline isn’t always apparent throughout the film.
Though It Will Be Chaos is primarily about the trials of these refugees, the filmmakers also give local Italian citizens who are opposed to immigration a chance to tell their stories and fears surrounding the refugee crisis. While some citizens are just nationalists who want Italy to come first, others speak on their local economies, unemployment, and the fact that there is little federal support for refugees, which then becomes an added burden of the already struggling, low-income communities. A question that also always came back to me was how did Luciano and Piscopo film? Throughout the documentary, it is easy to see that the footage goes between actual camera footage and that of a smartphone. The cell phone footage places the audience in several moments of fear and uncertainty. The audience is there with Eritrean Aregai and with the Syrian Orfahlis.
It Will Be Chaos debuts June 18th, exclusively on HBO, just in time for World Refugee Day, June 20th. Available on all HBO streaming platforms, It Will Be Chaos is a documentary film apt for the current times as we look to officials and different governments for how they maneuver their nations through the refugee crisis, which as of 2018, has consisted of hundreds of thousands of people leaving various conditions in their homes and finding life elsewhere.