Island of the Hungry Ghosts

On Christmas Island, a tiny Australian protectorate in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 50 million red crabs migrate from the jungle to the sea every year. On the same island, thousands of migrants seeking asylum from their Middle Eastern and African countries are held indefinitely in high-security facilities. Poh Lin is a counselor who lives on the island with his family. He works to give the detainees psychological support, and bears witness to their dramatic stories and emotional decline. Gabrielle Brady’s film is full of evocative and exciting moments. The director closely observes the tragedy of people subjugated and made powerless by the authorities, separated from their loved ones by force. But a look at nature’sancient, deep cycles, such as the crabs’ slow journey to the ocean, give a message of hope stronger than the brief and violent human history of this small wild island.