Maaike Engels (video artist and filmmaker) and Teun Voeten (war photographer and cultural anthropologist) made Welcome to the Jungle. A documentary about the utter chaos in the makeshift migrant camp near the channel tunnel in Calais, where some 6,000 people are now waiting in dire misery for their chance to travel clandestinely to England.
Welcome to the Jungle is a painful and at times hilariously morbid film, which makes clear what a catastrophic clusterfuck [hints] Military term for an operation in which multiple things have gone wrong. Related to SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up") and FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair). In radio communication or polite conversation (i.e. with a very senior officer with whom you have no prior experience) the term clusterfuck will often be replaced by the NATO phonetic acronym Charlie Foxtrot. By the time the artillery came in the enemy was already on top of us. It was a total clusterfuck. [/hints] taking place here. There is no policy, the French government does virtually nothing, or worse, even seems to sabotage attempts to make things a bit more liveable in the camp. In the process, assistance is left entirely to well-meaning but often hopelessly bruising civic initiatives. From the unfocused anarchists of the Solidarity Network (a group of "No Borders"-scanning free spirits), via Islamic welfare organisations fearing the radicalisation of their deeply frustrated fellow believers, to concerned locals who can no longer stand the harrowing mess on the outskirts of their town and "want to do something".
Whatever. Building tents, setting up a small library, or bringing a car full of food and clothes - which is then immediately, after intimidating pushing and pulling, looted by the camp's most aggressive alpha males.
The camp residents (Sudanese, Afghans, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis and, most recently, Syrians) have grouped themselves according to ethnicity and regularly go after each other. The law of the jungle prevails. The mood swings from apathy to blind despair, while the Henk & Ingrids from Calais shout that Marine Le Pen should come to power soon to come clean here.
English & Feet's cameras record it all mercilessly.
Grim spoiler: there is absolutely no prospect of a solution.
From early September to mid-October, the population of The Jungle almost doubled. About 6,000 people live here in ramshackle tents and are ankle-deep in mud. Scabies and respiratory infections are prevalent, the first cases of TB have been diagnosed and fights break out every other day. People fear for the coming winter months. Chances are that people will freeze to death here.
Engels and Voeten met on the set of the VPRO programme Fotostudio De Jong. As editor, I had prepared Voeten as a guest to come and tell something about Narco Estado (2012), his brilliant photo reportage on the brutal drug violence in Mexico (salient detail: one of Voeten's photos from this series is used in the leader of the popular Netflix series Narcos). Engels also worked for Fotostudio De Jong and was responsible for the visuals as VJ (with her audiovisual collective Urbi et Orbi). See here:
They recognised each other's commitment and became friends.
Voeten: "My little son lives in England and every few weeks I travel to him. Then I pass through Calais, so I saw that chaos unfold. I knew I had to deal with it, but it depressed me so much that I didn't dare do it alone."
Fortunately, English was on hand. Engels: "We both wondered what the personal motive is for those people to undertake such a dangerous journey. With this film, we show how incredibly problematic the situation there is. In doing so, we seek balance, but we don't have a solution."
Four trips to Calais and conversations with a number of experts yielded over 20 hours of material, which Engels edited into a beautiful, cinematic period piece about a "humanitarian disaster in slow motion", as they describe it themselves. Alongside the film, they also wrote a razor-sharp (and very funny) longread about their surreal experiences in Calais. The article for One World is free to read, click here
Feet: "Welcome to the Jungle is no cryie-huilie story, we don't want to score with cheap sentiment. We show how complex the situation is. So yes, we are showing a protesting Sudanese, who, with a big horn at the front of a demonstration, runs "FREEDOM!!!! FREEDOM!!!" running and shouting that he wants to go to the UK. It then turns out that he hardly speaks a word of English. At the same time, we also interview one of his compatriots who spends a few hours reading Shakespeare in the library every day - someone who is presumably much more likely to be grounded in England."
"We show the tension between great international ideals, and the harrowing human tragedies that can be the unintended consequence."
Welcome to the Jungle premiered 9 November at De Balie, Amsterdam. The makers can be contacted for more screenings. www.urbietorbi.nl / www.teunvoeten.com
English (UK) 
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