Sky and Ground (Joshua Bennett, Talya Tibbon, 2018): USA, Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro

Reviewed by Anton Jacobsson, Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2018

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The director behind Sky and Ground are Joshua Bennett and Talya Tibbon. Bennett has been in the business since around 2010 producing mostly documentary and documentary shorts. He released a documentary short in 2017 also about immigrants and border crossing. Tibbon has also done some production work as well as directing. She is also done a lot of documentaries and produced three documentaries about 9/11 in the year of 2011.

In Sky and Ground we get to follow a Syrian-Kurdish family as they flee from their home in Aleppo because of the war. They get to the Idomeni refugee camp on the border of Greece and Macedonia but their goal is Berlin. In berlin they what to reunite with family members and seek asylum. But first they have to make a dangerous journey through Serbia, Hungary and Austria and cross the borders illegally.

This family has to cross borders illegally to get a new a save life in Germany, this shows the flaws of the immigration policies around the world because they have to break the law just to get a place to live and feel save. This film is really in the right time because there is a lot of problems with immigrants and border security in Europe at this time. a lot of people fleeing from war and a lot of people die on the really dangerous journeys overseas or over borders. But this film really didn’t show a lot of conflicts with traveling through countries illegal and it all just felt too easy for them.

It thought this film was interesting to watch because it shows how a family’s story of them making their way from Syria to Germany. It was really well done even though with the limitations of filming with a phone. I really liked how you got to know the entire family so you could empathize with them in hard times and feel their joy in the easier times.