Where are you? Dimmi dove sei

Produced by Doclab for National Geographic with the patronage of the UNHCR.

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In the summer of 2014, at the beginning of the refugee crisis that was about to ravage the shores of the Mediterranean, Italian photographer Massimo Sestini boarded a helicopter to take a picture unlike any he had taken before. He wanted to photograph a migrants’ boat from above and capture the very moment in which they look up to the sky, knowing that help is on its way.  It took him many attempts and many flights before getting the right one. The image he caught is one of hope. The hope of men and women who had entrusted their lives and their future on the mercy of the sea and of Europe. The image went on to win a World Press Photo award and was selected as one of TIME magazine’s Top 10 Photos for 2015. 4 years later, the turmoil that has accompanied the arrival on Europe’s shores of millions of refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa has barely abated. National Geographic has decided to look for the men, women and children Sestini has photographed on that boat in 2014, to know where they are, what they have found and take a new picture of them nowadays. Massimo started with just an online appeal on his website. Little by little the search gets some results. Despite the passage of time, the chaos that has characterized the resettlement of the migrants, their primal instinct to disappear to avoid the authorities, we have been able to locate some of the people who were on the boat. Their stories are revealing, sometimes surprising and unexpected. Our characters will go deep into their own personal stories and explain reasons and motivations for such a dangerous journey: it was sometimes just a matter of surviving, others the only way to run away from war. They fought for freedom or for a new life. But they all had a dream, they all had hope. As we all do. We all have a dream, we all have hope. Now they are in Europe.  Some are safe and have started a brand-new life. Many are still in a precarious situation, thousands continue to risk their lives to cross the  Mediterranean. Along the way, through the photographer’s eyes, viewers will understand more about the incredible wave of migrants and refugees that is in the process of changing Europe, the countries they left behind, and their epic tales of survival against all odds.