Bon voyage !

Review of the film “Bon voyage !”

Jonas and Silvia are enjoying a sailing holiday in the Mediterranean sea. While sailing through the night, they discover an overloaded refugee boat, close to sinking. They are shocked, but too afraid to help. So they call the coast guards but lose the boat out of sight. In the early morning they find themselves drifting through an ocean of dead bodies. The refugee boat has sunk. Jonas and Silvia manage to pull a few survivors out of the cold water: Syrians. This rescue marks the beginning of a dramatic conflict between the hopes and dreams of the refugees, and the fears and ideals of the holiday sailors.”

This short film has been written and directed by Marc Wilkins, being released in 2016. It follows a swiss couple during their trip on a sailing boat, across the Mediterranean sea. It occurs that they pass by an overloaded refugee boat coming from North Africa. When the couple happens to see the boat, the two get a very different reaction which could be said as total opposites : the woman wants to make them climb the boat as if the refugee boat was not sinking already when the man thinks it is not manageable and reasonable. We could say that both reasoning are correct if you think in moral and immoral terms but what the man feels can be seen as a “fear-of-the-unknown”, of the foreign, which is understandable if you are sailing in a sea and suddenly see strangers after days of no sign of life. The scene after this is heartbreaking; you can see that most of the refugees have not survived the night because of the boat sinking. This take is to show the dangers of illegal traveling for refugees.

The second part of this short film starts when the few alive migrants are on the boat and start rebelling, thinking they are still in danger. To the man, they are “total paranoid” which is an evident feeling for people knowing they are risking their lives for a better life. The whole film, we can see people scared for their life, worried about what could happen the next minute. We don’t see people wanting to impose themselves on others. They do it because they have to.

This film is here to show what refugees can go through in only a week, from feeling scared to being dead in the sea, whatever the age, whoever they are or were.

This is what a man, a woman or a child has to endure to be able to live.