Rescue Co-development 2024

ended

RESCUE is a feature documentary project directed by Sine Plambech and Janus Metz and produced by Andreas Dalsgaard and Sofie Husum Johannesen at Copenhagen-based Elk Film and co-developed with the Italian production company Fluid Produzioni and producer Davide Barletti. Drawing on her extensive background as an anthropologist and as a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Sine Plambech brings unique expertise in areas such as human trafficking, women's migration, refugees and border politics. It is through Sine's extensive network and research that we have secured exclusive access to Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) rescue ship Geo Barents, in which lies the foundations for making this documentary. Together with renowned director Janus Metz, the two will take up yet another feature documentary project to draw attention to the ever more serious issue with migration and not the least the refugees coming from Africa to the European continent. With this unique access and creative team RESCUE will be able to show the fundamental conflicts between the causal explanations for migration across the Mediterranean: The explanation that argues that drowning deaths in the Mediterranean are caused by the profit motive of people smugglers; the explanation that argues that drowning deaths are caused by the EU's migration policy, where fewer legal options and difficult access to asylum creates more irregular migration; and a third explanation that finds the cause in the conflicts, unemployment, poverty and climate change that surround the EU's external borders. The purpose of this co-development is to secure urgent research material, to develop the narrative and visual style and to produce a full financing package including a pilot, financing deck and a well-crafted pitch for reaching production greenlight.