Strange Fish (2018)

"Strange Fish" echoes Billie Holiday's song "Strange Fruit" in which, to general indifference, violence against coloured people is taken as normal, with « black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees». In the South of the Mediterranean the feeling is the same. The fishermen in Zarzis, a Tunisian town on Libya's borders, set out each day wondering whether they will find a strange fish in their nets, the bloated corpse of a drowned migrant. But Strange Fish does not only show this drama, with its all-pervading indifference. It rather shows the deep and human response of the town's anonymous heroes. For 15 years, these fishermen have helped and saved thousands of people. "And if we find them already dead, we help them as well - we bury them", says Chamseddine Marzoug.