

Still, it is in the political context of Trump that viewers will see it-and Ai is no less critical of Trump than he was of the Chinese leaders who locked him up.
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The Guardian called the movie an “urgent deep soak in the refugee crisis” it also happens to be a haunting and appropriately sprawling portrait of a world on the move with the number of global migrants now estimated at 65 million-plus, that includes more displaced people right now on the planet than even in the aftermath of World War II. side of the border with Mexico or the Italian police with their rubber gloves and masks, handling the refugees as if they are dangerous contaminants.
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border guard who gives Ai an unintentionally hilarious lecture about how to stay on the U.S. The documentary is also an amazing feat of international reporting, with footage from many of the world’s hottest hot spots, and Ai is present on screen throughout, sort of a silent narrator who is there with Afghan refugees as they return from Pakistan across the Khyber Pass with Syrian children as they are passed off rubber boats to rescuers in the Greek islands and later, as they march, rain-soaked, through the unfriendly fields of Hungary and the Balkans in search of shelter.īut the political point about Western democracies is one that the film invariably finds its way back to-whether it’s the U.S. “We have to save our own soul and our own mind and our own society,” he said.

It’s a call to action for Americans, he told me, and a commentary on what he sees as the breakdown of our society into a “timid” and “cowardly” and “selfish” place, one whose new role in the world is very much at odds with its self-identity as this liberal, generous nation. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here.

When we met in Georgetown recently, I found Ai most compelling when talking about why he made the film, a “strangely beautiful” documentary, as the New York Times put it, shot in 23 countries from Asia to Africa to the Middle East and Europe over the course of a year.īy signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. “China, Russia, they all laugh about it.” “China is laughing about this situation,” he said. In a new interview for The Global Politico during a rare visit to Trump’s Washington, Ai referred to Trump’s win as “the moment I think history stopped,” a “backward” evolution that undermines liberal ideas like freedom of speech and human dignity everywhere.Īuthoritarian leaders in China and elsewhere are the beneficiaries of Trump and the crisis of American democracy, said Ai, who spent four years under house arrest and forbidden to leave China before being allowed to leave the country two years ago. Friday, and in a new, New York City-wide public art exhibit of 300 works in dozens of locations called “Good Walls Make Good Neighbors.”īoth are explicit rebuttals of the nationalistic, America-First-fueled policies espoused by Donald Trump, from his proposed Mexican border wall to his curbs on immigration that include admitting the smallest number of refugees to the U.S. The legendary artist, who has long embraced political themes in his work, has gone full-out activist in a new feature-length documentary film about the global refugee crisis, called Human Flow and released in theaters across the U.S. Never mind that he’s Chinese, or that he lives in Berlin in de facto exile these days.
