Film director Crialese slams Italian government's migrant policy

Sep 4, 2011, 14:29 GMT

Venice, Italy - Italian director Emanuele Crialese on Sunday criticised his country's migration policies when he presented his movie Terraferma at the Venice Film Festival.

Set on an unnamed southern Italian island, Terraferma tells the story of a family who decides to illegally shelter a pregnant Ethiopian woman and her young son after rescuing them at sea.

'The response of the (Italian) state is completely inadequate,' Crialese said speaking in Venice where his in-competition film drew applause at a morning press screening.

'Allowing people to die at sea is a sign of great disrespect,' Crialese said.

He was apparently referring to so-called 'push-back' policy of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government in which migrants intercepted in international waters are refused entry into Italy.

Until earlier this year and before the uprising against former Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi, the policy was enforced through a 2008 Rome-Tripoli pact which involved the return of migrants - mostly sub-Saharan Africans - to Libya.

The pact was scrapped following Italy's decision to join a NATO campaign to protect Libyan civilians from troops loyal to Gaddafi. 'Push-backs' have been condemned by the United Nations as a violation of the rights of asylum seekers.

In one scene of Terraferma, Italian authorities instruct the crew of a fishing boat not to rescue a group of stranded migrants, but to rather wait for the intervention of a coast guard patrol boat.

At the news conference Crialese also slammed what he suggested was the superficial way the mainstream media - and in particular television news programmes - dealt with the many 'tragedies' involving migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

During this year's upheavals in North Africa, including Tunisia and Egypt, tens of thousands of migrants arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

In a report issued in May the United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR, estimate up to 1,200 people fleeing Libya may have died in the Mediterranean Sea since the conflict in the North African country began in March.

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