Nuit obscure – “Ain’t I a Child?”

The film opens with footage shot on a mobile phone. Young men barely out of childhood - or perhaps not yet out of it - are at sea in a Zodiac. “Europe, my brother, Europe!” they shout, smiling, arms lifted toward the sky. These are the only colour images of the film.
In Paris, Malik, Mehdi, and Hassan, all underage, live on the streets. They spend most of their time with other harragas - undocumented migrants from North Africa - gathered above a subway grate, with the Eiffel Tower as a distant backdrop. There, they share the warmth rising from below, cigarettes, substances, stories - and survival tips. We follow them, often at night. The camera stays close, immersing us in their world as they pass tourists and wanderers, couples proposing by the Seine. A world so near, yet painfully out of reach. We are there too when violence erupts, whether among them or at the hands of the police sent to remove them.
Nuit obscure – "Ain’t I a Child?" brings to a close Sylvain George’s trilogy on migration policies, embodying rather than explaining. This sprawling, immersive film turns its gaze toward the individuals, focusing on daily acts of survival, and how migration policies become, quite literally, etched into the body.
Mourad-Anis Moussa