Breaking the stereotypes: New Channel 4 documentary showcases human side of ‘migrant’ crisis

“What are you doing? Stop hitting me – you can’t hit me, I’m a journalist.”

These chilling words, spoken to a French policeman in Calais just before the camera screen goes black, broken by a blow from a baton, come just over halfway through Channel 4’s new documentary highlighting the plight of refugees and migrants desperately seeking entry into the UK. Breaking into Britain: The Lorry Jumpers, which aired on Monday evening, chronicles the journeys of several men and women living in the squalor of Calais’ “Jungle” through the lens of acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Leo Maguire.

Although not the first to offer documentary footage of the daily trials of ordinary people living in the limbo of migration and displacement, Maguire’s film is perhaps unique in that it offers us a real, gritty, up-close portrait of the various difficulties such people face every day, often putting Maguire himself in uncomfortable and dangerous situations in order to do so. Following the police attack, for example – which Maguire says in a voice over was the first time he had experienced French police brutality with his own eyes – he had to spend a night in hospital to recover from the beatings.

The film opens with the story of Ozi, a young Algerian man with a lively manner and an incongruous British accent (he previously spend several years living in England illegally before having to return to Algeria when his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer) who is desperate to cross the channel and be reunited with his “sweetheart”. Through Maguire’s eyes – who we never see on screen, helping with the sense of reality and immediacy – we follow Ozi into a carpark in the dead of night, watching as his black silhouette silently tries to slip into one of the parked lorries waiting there. That night, however, as on so many others, his hopes are dashed.

Failure after failure, we watch as Ozi slips further into despondency and despair, his hope fading as he struggles to live day to day in the twilight zone. “Hopefully one day I’ll start my own life; a better life,” he says. “It’s not like you’re going to wake up and the nightmare is going to go away because you’re not dreaming, it’s reality.”

Other characters of the Jungle include Momo, a disillusioned Moroccan man who says he “can’t go back”, Mamoush, a plucky young Eritrean whose bright eyes and toothy smile hide a tragic story, and Fatima, an Ethiopian woman who fled her home country when her family was killed by government soldiers.

“A group of them tried to rape me but I ran away,” she says. “They poured petrol over me and threatened to set fire to me.”

Maguire is particularly drawn to Fatima, a lonely and defiant figure traipsing through the cold winter night in her bright yellow coat, handbag slug over her shoulder, looking for a lorry to take her to a better place. Along with several other migrants trying to get to England, Maguire spends 14 hours hiding with Fatima inside a lorry heading for the Channel tunnel, but they are eventually sniffed out by guard dogs and held in confinement for several hours before being released.

More than a document of the conditions in Calais and the brutality of the French police, Breaking into Britain is a story of defiance and courage and of people willing to take the greatest of risks to fulfil their dreams of a better life. Interestingly, most of the people we meet in the Jungle eventually do end up crossing into Britain, and Maguire catches up with Mamoush in Glasgow – his eyes burning with happiness to be in this “very nice city” – where Rebel, another migrant from Sierra Leon has also ended up.

“Now I have to study, to work very hard,” he says. “I respect the UK people. I want to thank them for everything.”

Fatima, too, finally fulfilled her dream of coming to the UK, and we find her again in Liverpool living in temporary accommodation while her request for asylum is processed. She especially loves riding the lift in her tower block, a smile plastered on her face as she presses the little metal buttons to choose her floor.

“I’ll never forget how I made my way to this country,” she says. “It was wrong to break into the lorry without permission… I feel bad about that, I pray that God will forgive me; he knows I was only doing it to survive.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.