02.03.23     ȊUVENTA at CEI Lisbon - March 02nd 2023!                27.11.20     ȊUVENTA has been selected at the 2020 edition of the festival I View World                11.02.20     ȊUVENTA 10 has been awarded with the Amnesty International Human Right Prize.               21.11.19     Official Selection 12th Festival de Cine Italiano de Madrid     Read More               01.11.19     In November 2019 ȊUVENTA gets to India!                01.11.19     ȊUVENTA has been awarded by SIAE "PER CHI CREA" international distribution fund!                01.11.19     ȊUVENTA in Athens at Festival Moviement                03.04.19     ȊUVENTA is available on Amazon on demand               27.07.18     International Human Right Film Festival (IHRFF) 2018, Tirana, Albania, 17th-22nd September 2018               26.07.18     Official selection – in competition at SalinaDocFest 2018, Salina, Italy, 13th-15th September 2018               29.06.18     Screening     Lampedusa July 7th in collaboration with Forum Lampedusa Solidale, Italy               01.06.18     Official Selection     Biografilm 2018, 1-24 June, Bologna, Italy     Read More               
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#guiltyofsolidarity – The ȊUVENTA 10

The Documentary

The documentary film ȊUVENTA relates the events of a crucial year in the lives of a group of young Europeans all involved in different ways in the Jugend Rettet humanitarian project, starting from the first voyage of the ȊUVENTA ship in the Mediterranean Sea to the heavy accusations that led to the seizure of the vessel more than a year later. The backbone of the narration is the ship’s first trip out to sea: setting sail from Malta, she comes back to La Valletta after 15 days offshore, having saved the lives of over 2,000 people. After the first mission the film takes us to Berlin and in Italy in the months following the first voyage, through the winter time when the future of the Jugend Rettet is discussed. The film, precisely because of the particularly young age of its protagonists, becomes the tale of a sort of training period: finding themselves at the forefront of this horror and death, and conscious of the vastness and complexities of the correlated socio-political problems, these youngsters start having doubts about the sense of the whole project which, it appears, determines in some way the loss of their innocence.

TIMELINE↗

18.04.2015Mare Nostrum Closure and Shipwreck
On 31 October 2014 the operation Mare Nostrum is shut down. On the night of 18 April 2015, off the coast of Libya, a ship carrying about 900 people is the victim of a tragic shipwreck, the numbers are chilling: 28 survivors, 58 confirmed victims and between 700 and 900 missing people. Reading of the tragedy, Jakob, a 19-year-old German student decides at that moment that it is mandatory to do something, turning his head to the other side for him and his friends is no longer an option. Thus, in reaction to one of the most dramatic tragedies of recent years in the Mediterranean Sea, the NGO Jugend Rettet is born from the idea of a group of young students, to carry out the necessary humanitarian work that Europe is no longer doing on its borders.
09.06.2016
09.06.2016Emden Harbour
After a long crowdfunding campaign and about 8 months’ search for the right sort of boat, the 10 students who founded Jugend Rettet are finally fixing up the old fishing boat renamed ȊUVENTA. Shortly they will be leaving Germany to travel towards Malta that will be the operating base for the rescue missions.
18.04.201529.06.2016
29.06.2016Lazy Film on Board
On June 29th 2016 the news that ȊUVENTA is finally operational and is traveling from Germany to Malta reaches Italy and is published by various newspapers. Reading about the utopian idea of Jugend Rettet Director Michele Cinque immediately feels that this would be the subject of his next film and decides, without any preparation, to leave for Malta to join the crew. Three days later he manages to embark on the first rescue mission of the ȊUVENTA.
09.06.201617.07.2016
17.07.2016Malta Harbour
Preparations are in full swing during the last days before the first mission sets off. We meet Jakob, the founder of Jugend Rettet, who describes the sense of the whole project and the captain of the boat, Benedict, who illustrates the route they will take.
29.06.201624.07.2016
24.07.2016Start of Mission
On the night of the 24th July 2016 at last the ȊUVENTA leaves the port of Malta for the first mission called Solidarity. 16 days of operations at sea are planned, and about 7,000 litres of diesel will be needed to travel 1,200 nautical miles.
17.07.201602.08.2016
02.08.2016International Waters I
On the 2nd August, the ȊUVENTA rescued 249 people who were aboard two rubber dinghies clearly in difficulty. Despite the presence of military ships, the ȊUVENTA was requested for the first time by the IMRCC to head towards Lampedusa to carry out the transfer. Given the difficulties caused by adverse weather conditions and lack of provisions on board, the units CP312 and CP324 of the Italian Coastguard were sent.
24.07.201615.08.2016
15.08.2016International Waters II
On the 15th August 2016, during the second mission, the ȊUVENTA sights a rubber dinghy in international waters, overloaded with migrants. The rescue mission authorized by the IMRCC is coordinated with the Seawatch RIB. The situation suddenly becomes critical when one side of the rubber dinghy collapses. Thanks to the swift intervention of the ȊUVENTA and Seawatch crews all the migrants are rescued. (Viewing of these images is not recommended for sensitive people).
02.08.201617.01.2017
17.01.2017Hotel Colibri, Biella
Cesar Dezfuli is working on a photographic project, going round the reception centres in Italy, meeting some of the people rescued during the ȊUVENTA’s first mission. He meets up with three of them at the Hotel Colibrì in Biella.
15.08.201609.03.2017
09.03.2017First Mission in 2017
After 3 months of maintenance work on March 09th the ȊUVENTA sets off for the first mission of 2017. In Italy, since February 2017, NGOs are at the center of all kind of accusations and insinuations made by public opinion and politics. Despite this, the mission involves young volunteers from all over Europe and concludes by saving 110 people. Photos by Federico Sutera.
17.01.2017

Passengers↗

Photography by César Dezfuli

On 1st August 2016, 118 people were rescued from a rubber boat drifting in the Mediterranean Sea, 20 nautical miles off from the Libyan coast. One more of the hundreds of boats that have been rescued from this migratory route in the past years. Only in 2016, when historical records were beaten, 181.436 migrants were rescued safe, while 4.576 lost their lives at sea.
But who is behind these numbers? What is the identity of the victims and survivors of this journey?
In an attempt to put name and face to this reality, to humanise this tragedy, I carry out this work of documentation composed of 118 portraits of all the people who traveled on board the same boat, taken minutes after their rescue, once on board of the rescue vessel ȊUVENTA, from the search and rescue NGO Jugend Rettet. Their faces, their looks, the marks on their body, their clothes or the absence of it... reflect the mood and physical state in which they are in a moment that has already marked their lives forever. Documenting it can serve to bring this migration reality closer to those who only observe it from a distance.
Here are the protagonist and passengers of that rescue, that one more rescue, that took place in the Mediterranean Sea on 1st August 2016.

ȊUVENTA 10

ȊUVENTA CREW MEMBERS NOW NEED YOUR HELP

We are Captains, Paramedics and Firefighters, Students, Astrophysicists, IT developers: we are the ȊUVENTA 10. We risk 20 years in prison for rescuing over 14,000 people from distress at sea. After the seizure of the ship, the Italian prosecutor in Trapani has officially initiated investigations into 22 individuals, including 10 crew members of the ȊUVENTA, for allegedly favoring illegal immigration. We firmly reject all accusations and condemn the criminalization of rescue at sea. This trial is not just about us. All across Europe volunteers are being prosecuted for showing solidarity with people in need. And that’s not all: the transformation of the Mediterranean into a cemetery for migrants is a political project of Europe. We will continue our struggle for human rights and solidarity with pride. We are determined to use this criminal case against us as a platform to denounce the deadly European border regime. To do this we will need your help both now and in the future. The trial has not yet begun and we expect not only an incredible amount of legal expenses, but also media and political attacks on many fronts. We won’t let any of them stop us. But it is public support that will really matter, for this reason, we invite you to sign up for our newsletter at iuventa10.org to support us and stay in touch.

INTERVIEWS
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THE CRIME OF RESCUE

The video presented here offers a counter-investigation on the events that lead to the seizure of the ȊUVENTA. It was realised by Forensic Oceanography and Forensic Architecture as part of a year-long research on the criminalisation of NGOs operating rescue in the Central Mediterranean. Since the end of 2016, a growing campaign of de-legitimisation has systematically targeted NGOs engaged in search and rescue, the vast majority of whom have been forced to suspend their activities. While no charges have been so far brought against the crew of the ȊUVENTA nor against Jugend Rettet as an organisation, thus making it extremely difficult for them to respond to these accusations, the boat remains under custody of the Italian police in the port of Trapani, Sicily.

 

Read the full report


Read the full report

The Crime of Rescue – An investigation by Forensic Oceanography and Forensic Architecture

Forensic Oceanography’s investigation has been made possible by an exponential increase in video documentation by the different actors involved, allowing for a unique form of 3D modelling of incidents at sea developed together with Forensic Architecture. While the accusations against the ȊUVENTA operate by decontextualizing factual elements and recombining them into a spurious chain of events, this video reconstruction attempts instead to cross-reference all elements of evidence into a coherent spatio-temporal model. From this analysis, it appears that the ȊUVENTA crew did not return empty boats for re-use, nor communicate with anyone potentially connected with smuggling networks. The materials we have reviewed further show the ȊUVENTA crew’s professionalism and commitment to saving lives at sea.

 

Read the full report


Read the full report

The Crime of Rescue – An investigation by Forensic Oceanography and Forensic Architecture

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ȊUVENTA Film DVD13€       BUY

Lenght: 89’20’'
Video format: PAL 2:39
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek
Extra contents: The Crime of Rescue by Forensic Architecture and Forensic Oceanography and many more
Distributor: Goodfellas
Cover design: Tommaso Guerra