Human Flow, directed by Ai Weiwei, 2017.

Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact.

Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. Human Flow is a witness to its subjects and their desperate search for safety, shelter and justice: from teeming refugee camps to perilous ocean crossings to barbed wire borders; from dislocation and disillusionment to courage, endurance and adaptation; from the haunting lure of lives left behind to the unknown potential of the future.

Human Flow comes at a crucial time when tolerance, compassion and trust are needed more than ever. This visceral work of cinema is a testament to the unassailable human spirit and poses one of the questions that will define this century: Will our global society emerge from fear, isolation, and self interest and choose a path of openness, freedom, and respect for humanity?
Amazon Studios and Participant Media present, in association with AC Films, Human Flow, a film directed by Ai Weiwei. Human Flow is produced by Ai Weiwei, Chin-Chin Yap and Heino Deckert and executive produced by Andrew Cohen of AC Films with Jeff Skoll and Diane Weyermann of Participant Media.

Maria Svarbova, Bratislava, Slovakia.

Any unique image that you desire probably already exists on the internet or in some database… the problem today is no longer how to create the right image, but how to find an already existing one.

L.M.

RETOKA, Barcelona, Spain.

Only he who has a different visual opening can see the world in another way and can pass on to his neighbour the information required to broaden his field of view…let us get used to looking at the world through the eyes of others.

B.M.

Inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s work, the titles delve into a microscopic world and brings to life the real beauty of this unseen world. It follows the story of microorganisms from birth to death: representing the event theme of ‘creative tension’ in three stages: pushing and pulling, friction, and release.

Made in partnership with Dropbox, the titles were a grand collaborative project between a dream team of eleven talented people of different disciplines, from all around the world.

The process into making the titles were documented through four films by Ways & Means: Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.

Wistful & Subsets + Qatarsis + Dedekind Cut + ,indigo.

When the artist observes nature… it is as if nature communicated, through the sensitivity of the artist at that moment, one of its secrets.

B.M.

Bassam Allam, Munich, Germany.

… the reason we think that computer graphics technology has succeeded in faking reality is that we, over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, have come to accept the image of photography and film as reality.

L.M.