A SEARING Italian documentary on Europe’s refugee influx drew cheers Saturday at the Berlin film festival, which has rolled out the red carpet for pictures offering unique takes on the crisis.

    “Fire at Sea” by award-winning director Gianfranco Rosi, set on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, emerged as an early favorite among 18 contenders for the festival’s Golden Bear top prize, to be awarded by jury president Meryl Streep on Feb. 20.

    The film provides an unflinching look at the thousands of desperate people who arrive on the island each year trying to enter the European Union, and the thousands more who have died trying.

    But Rosi, who spent several months on Lampedusa making the documentary, also offers a tender portrait of the rhythms of daily life in Lampedusa’s ancient fishing villages and efforts of local people to help those in need.

    “It bears witness to a tragedy that is happening right before our eyes,” Rosi told reporters following an enthusiastically received press preview.

    “I think we are all responsible for that tragedy and perhaps after the Holocaust, it is the greatest tragedy we have ever seen in Europe.”

    The picture is told through the eyes of a 12-year-old local boy, Samuele Pucillo, and a doctor, Pietro Bartolo, who has been tending to the often dehydrated, malnourished and traumatized new arrivals for a quarter-century.

    Rosi, who clinched the Venice film festival’s 2013 Golden Lion for his film “Sacro GRA,” also accompanied coastguard rescue missions answering the terrified SOS calls of people on overcrowded boats, most of them arriving from Libya.

    They are taken to a reception center for medical examinations and processing while awaiting transfer to other sites in Italy. Rosi captures the migrants’ overwhelming relief to be on dry land, the shock that gives way to mourning for their dead, and the crushing boredom they break up with rough-and-tumble football games.

    Festival director Dieter Kosslick said ahead of the festival that a single theme ran through much of the selection this year, “the right to happiness — the right to a home, to love, to self-determination, to life and to survival.”

    The 11-day cinema showcase is also featuring around a dozen films shining a light on the crisis in various ways. The festival runs until Feb. 21.(SD-Agencies)