Chinese artist premieres film at Venice festival

Rudimentary mobile phone shots of people huddled in rubber boats approaching a Greek island were what led to the creation of refugee epic Human Flow, which Chinese artist Ai Weiwei premiered at the Venice film festival this week.

“I was on vacation with my son in Lesbos, we saw the boat approaching, I started using my iPhone and started shooting,” Mr. Ai told journalists.

The phone images soon turned into a massive production involving more than 200 crew members and 23 locations: from Iraq to Bangladesh, Italy to Kenya, Afghanistan and Mexico.

Told in a way that mixes drone footage with quotes from poets and sit-down interviews, the movie does not follow one particular story but takes the viewer on a journey through the various facets of migration found in the world today.

“I have this ambition to use the film to document our time,” said Mr. Ai.

“The refugee situation has such a long history, with such political complexity and the overwhelming situation, so the use of film is the right tool for myself to study the situation and to make a historical record of our time, our moment.”

There are shots of people carrying their belongings on their backs making perilous crossings on foot or at sea, those camping in tents along barbed-wire border fences and children playing on makeshift sandy soccer fields.

In the midst of it is Mr. Ai himself, helping pull people onto the shore or comforting a veiled woman who breaks down on camera. All the while he carries his iPhone, occasionally shooting.

“If I cannot be there, if I cannot sit in the same condition with them, the film will never work,” Mr. Ai said.

The 140-minute long documentary is Mr. Ai’s first feature-length movie and one of 21 U.S. and international movies vying for the Golden Lion that will be awarded on September 9.