Claiming this film to be "from the perspective of Somalians" is not only misleading, it is infuriating. The film donates a whole one liner to sum up the reasoning behind piracy in Somalia and portrays only one Somalian character as a human being with justified reasons to be acting so desperately, while all the others are portrayed as drug induced money hungry monsters. This is just another uninformed film maker trying to sell a one-sided, cruel American perspective. The line at the end of the film insinuating that the main character (representing Somalians) have brought this faith upon themselves is disgusting. This film is said to cover the "why" behind Somalian Piracy. Not only does this film not cover the "why", it shed even less light on the Somalianperspective than the movie Captain Philips. When the director was questioned about the real reasoning behind Somalian piracy (countries, including America, going in and over fishing and dumping nuclear waste in Somalia when they had no defense system in place) he responded with, "Well we were going to put that into the film, but it didn't make the final cuts and we didn't want to portray one side of the story...". Which was quite the contradiction as that was exactly what he did. He is attempting to sell the same "pirate story" that the media uses to further fuel the hatred and create an even bigger divide between America and impoverished countries. During the question and answer the guy facilitating it even made the comment of "good job portraying the pirates as "people" " making me sick to my stomach. These are real people that are in a desperate situation in a world where nobody will even hear them out, let alone help them. The director claims to have spent time in Somalia and even used Somalian's as actors in his film; I can not imagine the shame one must feel after having actually spent time in that area and then to come to a place where he could actually make a difference for those people and instead, continue to spread the lies. I would not recommend this film to anyone.
Review of Fishing Without Nets
