Lampedusa -- a Review

Lampedusa is an excellent 2016 two-part Italian mini-series starring Claudio Amendola as Coast Guard Commander Marco Serra and Carolina Crescentini as Viola the administrator of a refugee reception center.

This production gives human faces to the unimaginable numbers of refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean Sea in dangerously inadequate water craft and to the people who try to help them.

Commander Serra is just the kind of fiercely independent hero, we love and the military brass hates. He trusts and supports his crew doing the thankless, but courageous job of saving refugees even if it means bucking orders. And sometimes saving local fishermen from an aggressive Libyan navy who tries to confiscate their boat, their only source of livelihood. (Somehow, it never occurred to me to be concerned about Italian fishermen in the Mediterranean. But of course their work can take them off the coast of the Libya, the same Libya of the infamous Benghazi attack in 2012.)

And Viola has the equally thankless and courageous job of welcoming destitute people and then trying to provide for them until they can be relocated to a more permanent encampment on the mainland. Depending on insufficient funding from the Italian government and the sporadic beneficence of the world at large, she must provide food, shelter, medical care, etc., etc., etc. to these needy people.

Commander Serra rescues a young boy Daki from the sea. He turns Daki over to Viola. Neither of them know that Daki's mother and younger sister were left in Libya until she can manage to get them on another boat to Italy.

All this in the midst of the Lampedusa community, a community with its own needs and concerns. That community is divided between those who have historically welcomed and helped people coming through in search of a better life and those who want to protect their way of life on the island.

Lampedusa's economy depends on fishing, agriculture, and tourism. Just like the real island, some of the people in this drama depend on tourism for their daily bread. And getting people to come to a beautiful island for their holidays when their enjoyment may be disrupted by bodies in various states of decomposition washed up on the beautiful beaches. Or the swim-with-dolphins excursion interrupted by a distress call from a vessel sinking with too many souls needing rescue. For them the refugees are not welcome at all, not even temporarily.

This is a fictional account of the altogether too real circumstances of Lampedusa. As the European territory closest to Libya, it has become a prime transit point for irregular immigrants wanting to enter Europe from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. It is an Italian island 127 miles southwest of Sicily. In point of fact it is closer to Libya than it is to Italy.

According to Wikipedia, Lampedusa has an area of about 7.8 square miles and a population of about 6,000 people. We are talking an island just a little more than one-half the size of Liberty Island, the home of the Statue of Liberty. And a population of about the same size as Flathead, Montana. Ever heard of it? Me, neither. Other than being in the middle of the proverbial nowhere, I doubt the two communities have much in common.

According to the UN Refugee Agency more than 150,000 refugees made the crossing between Libya and Italy with the likelihood of dying during the attempt at one death for every 47 arrivals. Can you imagine your little community of 6,000 hosting an influx of that many people for whatever short interval of time until they can move on to what they hope will be a better life.

How bad must the circumstances be for a woman to take her eight- and ten-year-old children to a country where she's never been and where she does not speak the language? On foot, many miles across hostile, unforgiving land. Then unable to all get on a questionable boat to cross the sea, she chooses to send her ten-year-old alone. She knows many people have died trying to make that crossing, but she sees the danger as less than the danger of waiting until they can all go. She sees the opportunities for him as greater than the risk. That is not only Daki's fictional story, but the real story of real people.

What do I know about refugees or, for that matter, a small island in the Mediterranean Sea? I live in Colorado. Our economy comes from the supersectors of natural resources and construction, leisure and hospitality, and education and health services. The federal government is a major economic force with military bases and offices and labs connected to all the government agencies.

Colorado has abundant National Forest land and four National Parks that draw millions of tourists every year. It is notable for its concentration of scientific research and high-technology industries. Other industries include food processing, transportation equipment, the production of machinery and chemical products, and the mining of metals such as gold, silver, and molybdenum.

Instead of the beautiful sea and sky that Lampedusa enjoys, we have the mountains and sky. Colorado now also has the largest annual production of beer of any state. Denver is an important financial center. It is home to professional sports teams from Roller Derby to Rugby and Lacrosse and includes ice hockey, soccer, and all the regulars like football, baseball, and basketball. What "white privilege?" We have "Colorado privilege."

Lampedusa the TV mini-series brings to us a visceral sense of these people's reality in a way that we can kind of begin to actually understand them.

The only access to this production that I know of is Amazon MHz. I don't know what that is, but it's out there. I just happened onto the mini-series on our local International Mysteries channel. It is worth looking for.