“Moria – A Living Hell” at Douarnenez Film Festival

Moria, par-delà l’enfer (English title: “Moria – A Living Hell”), the 2020 documentary film co-directed by Laurence Monroe and PICT contributor Mortaza Behboudi, has joined the lineup of the 43^rd Douarnenez Film Festival, to be held from August 21 to 28, 2021 in Douarnenez, France.

In March 2020, the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece, held more than 20,000 people. It had been built to accommodate 2,000. To document the inhuman living conditions in the EU’s largest refugee camp, international journalist and PICT contributor Mortaza Behboudi spent half a year, from March to September 2020, in the camp along with French activist Maurice Joyeux. Moria – A Living Hell, the product of this sojourn, is built on exclusive footage Mortaza illegally shot in the camp to bring the plight of Moria’s inhabitants to global attention. “I wanted to go and listen to people, and to tell their stories,” Mortaza says about the film. “I wanted to humanise the journey of migration and to give them a voice.”

After premiering on July 9 at Le Petit Majestic bar during the Cannes Film Festival 2021, Moria – A Living Hell became part of ARTE’s documentary lineup, where it can be viewed in six languages, including English subtitles. The film was picked up by the 43^rd Douarnenez Film Festival for its relevance to the 2021 festival theme, “Peuples et Luttes en Grèce” (“Peoples and Struggles in Greece”). Founded in 1978, the Douarnenez Film Festival devotes each year’s edition to a specific country or region and its threatened identites, languages, and cultures. Apart from the various screenings of Moria – A Living Hell, Mortaza will also participate in a debate session entitled “Réfugiés en Grèce, un long chemin qui ne mène nulle part” (“Refugees in Greece: A Long Road that Leads to Nowhere”) on Friday, August 27.

Mortaza’s journalistic and documentary work, which often focuses on mass migration and refugee issues, has taken him to 35 countries around the world. In 2018, he co-founded Guiti News, the first news agency jointly operated by French and refugee journalists. In 2019, he was named one of Forbes magazine’s “30 under 30” in the field of media in Asia. An early supporter of PICT, Mortaza featured as guest on the inaugural episode of the PICT Voices podcast, Moria Refugee Camp, as well as PICT Voices episode 27, Moria Revisited. He has also contributed an article to The Faculty Lounge blog entitled One Day, We May Dream Greenland.

Click here for all screening details of Moria – A Living Hell at the Douarnenez Film Festival.