#10 "Lifeboat" Rescue at Sea

What happens when the world fails to live up to the goal of safe, orderly and regular migration? In the latest episode of "A Way Home Together, Stories of the Human Journey", we look at an urgent search-and-rescue operation to save the lives of desperate migrants and refugees, who were crowded onto rafts and small boats in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya.

"Lifeboat" is a half-hour film that was recently nominated for this year's best short-subject documentary Oscar. The Academy Awards will be announced in Hollywood on February 24.

"I consider it part of my work to make the unwatchable watchable," says "Lifeboat" Director Skye Fitzgerald. "If we can build empathy towards those who are making a conscious bid to flee torture, detention, rape and trafficking, I think it gets us one step closer to systematically solving the problem."

His film follows dramatic rescues by volunteer crew members on a re-fitted research vessel, "Sea Watch", as they save the lives of people in imminent danger of drowning.

 

"It's a shock to the system," said Sea Captain John Castle, who led the rescue attempts. "We've got a lot of people in terrible trouble in the small boats, and the boats aren't going to last very long out there."