Nightwatchers

When night falls in the picturesque French ski resort of Montgenèvre, the mountains become the setting for a desperate game of cat-and-mouse. Nighttime is when small groups of migrants trek from Italy to France across the snowy Alps, all the while being hunted by the border police. A team of volunteers and members of Doctors Without Borders try to provide help where they can. In the darkness they scour the slopes searching for stragglers and strays—for pregnant women, young children with no parents, the sick—whose willingness to face the perilous nocturnal journey across the ice betrays their desperation.

The prevailing emotion among the volunteers is one of outrage at the system. How did it come this far, that asylum seekers have to make such inhumane decisions? The camera follows the aid workers closely for a single night—the horror stories told by refugees in whispered voices contrast starkly with the idyllic moonlit landscape. Several of them recount in voice-over the hardships they have endured on their sometimes years-long trek to join Europe.