2. Documenting Difference: Migration and Identity in European Documentaries

Vaughan offers an assessment of how recent European documentaries are responding to the ongoing migrant crisis, and, in so doing, he asks how these films trigger a re-evaluation of what it means to be ‘European’. The chapter also summarises how technological developments—such as digital image-making and online viewing platforms—have influenced nonfiction aesthetics and helped to create an interactive viewing culture where spectators are able to participate in these debates. ‘Documenting Difference’ ends with a detailed analysis of Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea (2016) which encourages audiences to acknowledge the plight of refugees as they arrive on the Italian island of Lampedusa by organising various textual representations of ‘seeing’.