Libya, No Escape from Hell (Sara Creta) France |

Libya, No Escape from Hell
Sara Creta
France. 2021. 60 min

Libya, No Escape From Hell is an eye opener on the migrants’ reality in Libya but also on the horrific machine that has been set up and the scale of those responsible for the situation that take advantage of European policies.

The detention centres in Libya where thousands of migrants await in inhuman conditions for someone – the militia, Europe, the UN – to decide what their fate should be, are at the heart of this documentary. If officially, detention centres are run by the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, in reality they are in the hands of militias that control the country and see in migrants a ready source of cash by kidnapping and torturing them.

This film looks at the entire detention system, how this traffic works, the role of the militias and the way in which their control is exercised. It aims to point out the responsibilities of those involved, first and foremost that of the European Union which provides financing then takes no responsibility. What needs to be changed and what are the solutions?

Europe seems to be at the mercy of Libyan blackmail and the measures taken to help Libya deal with the migrant problem reinforce the cycle of “extreme abuse”.

SARA CRETA

Sara Creta is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, with extensive experience investigating human rights abuses. Over the past years, she documented on-the-ground conditions in forced migration situation, human rights violation, crisis management and cultures in transition.

Recently, she was in Sudan to cover the uprising for the ARTE, a Franco-German free-to-air television network and she co-authored a 22 minutes documentary on Women’s stories from the frontline of Sudan’s revolution.

In the past, she has worked with the German Television ZDF on a documentary about Libya and EU policies; on a documentary series on migration in the Mediterranean for NRK, television in Norway; filmed at the border between Morocco and Spain with RAI, Italian television.

Her work has appeared on The New York Times, Al Jazeera English, RTE, Arte, NRK, ZDF, AJ+, Channel 4, The Guardian, Middle East Eye, Euronews, BBC, The New Humanitarian, O Globo, Equal Times, El Diario, El Pais, La Repubblica.

She has been working in the field with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in humanitarian contexts like Libya, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Bangladesh. In 2016, as part of MSF’s campaign to highlight the deadly routes refugees and migrants are taking to Europe, she spent 4 months on a search and rescue vessel in the Mediterranean Sea.

Striking imagery in her archives include counties like Brasil, Argentina, Paraguay, Morocco, Sudan, Cameroon, Libya, Tunisia, Palestine, Gaza, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, DRC, Uganda, Rwanda, Lake Chad and Bangladesh.