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‘Documentaries Give You the Space and Time to Work Differently with the Characters’
An Interview with Madeleine Leroyer
Madeleine Leroyer’s debut documentary #387 depicts the less known side of what has become known as the ‘migrant crisis’. It provides insight into the investigation of identifying those who tried to cross the Mediterranean but lost their lives in April 2015. Besides capturing the work done by a dedicated team to bring justice to the absent ones, the film also amplifies the voice of friends and family members, and those who survived. The documentary premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2019 and the team is currently working on their impact campaign #numbersintonames to show the film to as many people as possible across continents. I sat down with Madeleine to talk about her film and her shift from journalism to documentary filmmaking.
While watching #387, I thought it was so different from many of the documentaries I’d seen about migration and/or refugees. How did the film come about?
I started the research process in the summer of 2015, which was the peak of what the media called the migration…
