Press Release: The FIRST screening of STOLEN FISH (featuring ST's song) across Africa / 20-24 July at Accra Indie Film Fest / a documentary on Chinese fishmeal industry in The Gambia Odebrane.
Dear All,
We are excited to announce that STOLEN FISH, an award-winning and groundbreaking documentary, the first one to explore the link between overfishing/Chinese-led fishmeal industry and migration in The Gambia will be screened at Accra Indie Filmfest (Ghana) between 20 and 24 of July and will be available online all over the African continent in this period. It is a unique opportunity for the African public to access this eye-opening piece.
When / 20-24 July 2021
Where / Accra Indie Filmfest 2021 https://accraindiefilmfest.org
Available for / All African countries, online, with English and French subtitles
How to watch / streaming platform called “AiF TV” on the festival website www.accraindiefilmfest.org
Festival ssmm / Instagram: @accraindiefilmfest Facebook: @accraindiefilmfest Twitter: @accraindiefilm1 YouTube: Accra Indie Filmfest
ABOUT THE FILM
STOLEN FISH / Trailer / https://vimeo.com/386356866 / Facebook / Instagram / Synopsis / In the Gambia, the smallest country of mainland Africa, fish is now being powered up by Chinese corporations and exported to Europe and China to feed animals in industrial farming. As a result, Gambians are being deprived of their primary source of protein, overfishing is depleting marine ecosystems. The film follows Abou, Mariama and Paul, three Gambians who share intimate stories of daily struggle, anger, hope and longing for their loved ones. The first film on Gambia’s fishmeal factories offering a unique insight into untold drivers of migration.
STOLEN FISH is a threefold poetic documentary addressing the underreported environmental and economic factors of migration in The Gambia after Chinese fishmeal factories invaded the country's coast and threaten both the ecosystem and the food security. This groundbreaking documentary is the first one to tackle the underreported domino effect of overfishing in the Gambia and is a starting point of a wider debate, touching upon issues relevant to today's reality, such as migration, environment, food security and neocolonialism, and how they are all interconnected - told in a nutshell case of the tiny country of The Gambia. It sheds light on the fact that the way we Europeans consume makes us complicit in the exploitation of West Africa, without even realising it.
It is the first time ever that the film will be available in African countries online and Gambian activists hope this film can be a tool for raising awareness on the pressing issue of the Chinese-led fishmeal industry in West Africa, government complicity, overfishing and migration, all interconnected and presented in the case study of the tiny Gambia. The fishmeal factories were established in the Gambia only in 2017 but have already had disastrous effects on the local economy, food security, tourism and social fabric. This is not only relevant to Gambia, there are approx 50 fishmeal factories in West Africa, and the Chinese expansion and debt policy all over Africa is becoming a huge concern and an issue that needs a thorough social debate.
Although the film is not an African production per se, we worked tightly with Gambian activists, scientists and environmentalists on getting the story right: Mustapha Manneh, part of the production team of the film, Gambian journalist, activist and environmentalist, expert on fishmeal; Ahmed Manjang, Gambian scientist exploring the environmental effects of the fishmeal factories in the Gambia; Momodou Semmega Janneh, Gambian activist pursuing a court case against the Chinese-led fishmeal factories in the Gambia. We are also working closely with Greenpeace Africa, who are also featured in the film. The film also features ST Gambian Dream's song - that lays the context for the story told from within and in Mandinka language.
STOLEN FISH [UK/Poland/Spain], produced by Minority Rights Group International and directed by Gosia Juszczak, premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest, where it was ranked amongst 10 most radical films by VICE Magazine. It won the Jury Prize for Best Short at Livable Planet Film Festival in San Francisco and received a special mention at Afrykamera Film Festival and at New Jersey International Film Festival. After its Spanish premiere at MiradasDoc the film was thoroughly covered by the Spanish newspaper El Pais. At this year’s DocEdge Film Festival in New Zealand STOLEN FISH was nominated for the Best Short Award and now it has just received the Best Documentary Award at One Country One Film Festival in France, where it was representing The Gambia.
The movie might be finished but the lives of the people it documented are not and their struggle deserves attention more than ever. Well after the film's premiere something extraordinary happened. One of the protagonists, Abou, embarked on a risky trip to Europe and successfully reached the canary Islands (Spain), The stories gathered in "Stolen Fish" gained additional depth and the movie turned out to be visionary. Although quite underreported, the Canary Islands (Spain) have recently become a hotspot for migrant reception and are turning into the infamous Greek camps model. The fact that overfishing by the Chinese 'investors' would have such direct (and fast) impact on migration was merely a hypothesis while we were shooting, however at this very moment it is turning out to be exactly the case: big part of migrants that reached Canary Islands from West Africa in the last months are precisely fishermen who lost their livelihoods [El Pais]. Abou recently represented the film in person for the first time at Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa, being able to use it as a tool in his very personal activism and tell his story and that of his country first hand, creating impact through numerous press interviews. This empowerment through film in the powerless position as an asylum seeker he encountered himself in our Fortress Europe, is another huge value of Stolen Fish.
The film is not only raising awareness at film festivals throughout the world sparkling important debates, but serves as a tool for educating youth about, globalisation, ethical consumption, sustainable development and migration. A series of workshops for youth were held in the framework of festivals’ educational programmes, such as “EnseńanDoc school programme of MiradasDoc Film Festival in Tenerife Spain, Regensburg Short Film Week in Germany or Watch Docs Human Rights Film Festival in Poland. During these debates, high school students were able to ask the most daring and difficult questions to Abou, one of the film's protagonists, who generously shared the account of his recent migratory experience to Europe.
With Abou's arrival to Europe the project also got a new turn. I am now working on a feature film, continuing to document Abou's journey within the documentary development programme DocLab Poland. The decision Abou took to take "the back way" was extremely hard, thus it felt important to show the other side of the coin: namely what the first steps in Europe feel like for a migrant like Abou, especially one that wants to take action against many injustices. Anyone interested in supporting this project please get in touch with Gosia Juszczak, the director.
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FILM’S TRAJECTORY
Awards / Sheffield Doc/Fest (UK, 2020): 10 Most Radical Films by VICE Magazine / Sheffield Doc/Fest: Top 10 Shorts by Documentary Weekly / Livable Planet Film Festival San Francisco (USA 2021): Jury Prize for Best Short / Afrykamera Film Festival (Poland 2020): special mention “for a brilliant presentation of the complexity of the issues of globalization, environment and migration in a nutshell, as well as for a complete departure from the pro-Western perspective and empathetic approach while giving the voice to the Gambian protagonists” / Semifinalist for Gold Movie Awards (UK) in the category Green Movie Awards / at DocEdge Film Festival (New Zealand 2021): Nominated for Best Short Oscar-qualifying Award / New Jersey International Film Festival (USA 2021): Honorable Mention / One Country One Film (France 2021): Best Documentary Award / Santorini Film Festival: award nomination
Film Festivals / Sheffield Doc/Fest (UK, 2020) / Watch Docs Human Right Film Festival (Poland, 2020) / Afrykamera (Poland, 2020) / Man in Danger (Poland, 2020) / Sustainable Living Film Festival (Turkey, 2020) / MiradasDoc (Spain, 2021) / Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital (Washington DC, USA, 2021) / Cameroon International Film Festival (Cameroon, April 2021) / Livable Planet Film Festival (San Francisco, April 2021) / Millenium International Film Festival (Belgium, 2021) / Vox Feminae (Croatia, 2021) / Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa (Spain, 2021) / New Jersey International Film Festival (USA, 2021) / Liberation Docfest (Bangladesh, 2021) / International Short Film Week Regensburg (Germany, 2021) / One World Film Festival (Slovakia, 2021) / DOC EDGE International Documentary Film Festival (New Zealand, 2021) / Młodzi i Film (Poland, 2021) / Festival of Migrant Film (Slovenia) / Norwegian Short Film Festival (Norway, 2021) / One Country One Film (France, 2021)
Scheduled festivals / 27th European Film Festival Palić (Serbia, July 2021) / Accra Independent Film Festival (Ghana, July 2021) / Gold Movie Awards (UK, August 2021) / Moscow Shorts (Russia, August 2021) / Luna de cortos (Spain, August 2021) / Krakow Green Film Festival (Poland, August 2021) / Ecofalante (Brasil, August 2021) / Her Docs (Poland, September 2021) / Helsinki International Film Festival (Finland, September 2021) / 26th Split Film Festival (Croatia, September 2021) / CinEast Central and Eastern European Film Festival (Luxembourg, October 2021) / Marda Loop Justice Film Festival (Canada, November 2021)
Debates around the film / Sheffield Doc/Fest (in English), Afrykamera Film Festival (debate with director, representative of Compassion in World Farming, ngo campaigning against industrial farming and investigating the fishmeal industry and an anthropologist specialized in The Gambia, in Polish) / Watch Docs Film Festival (in English) / Man in Danger Film Festival (in Polish) / MiradasDoc (Q&A with director) / EnseńanDoc (debate with high school students and the protagonist around migration, in Spanish) / MiradasDoc, panel discussion around migration with activists, migrants and creators of the film (in Spanish and English) / Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital (Q&A with director, in English)
Reviews / in English / VICE / Documentary Weekly /Business Doc Europe / Filmuforia / Eye For Film / Exposed Magazine / Polish Shorts / 500 Days of Film / JumpCut Online / in Spanish / ElPaís / El Salto / Javier Tolentino, “Séptimo Vicio” Show, Radio 3 / SensaCine /
There’s so much to worry about in the world but Stolen Fish is a 30 minute microcosm of what is wrong with it, eloquently put by those who take the brunt of the destruction caused by global capitalism. - JumpCut Online
Gosia Juszczak
Filmmaker & Journalist & Translator
https://storyhunter.com/gosia-juszczak
STOLEN FISH documentary: TRAILER
STOLEN FISH documentary: FB
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