CCAS Professor Noureddine Jebnoun and MAAS alum Jakob Plaschke have collaborated to direct and produce the new documentary, En Route to Europe, We Burn or Die. Prof. Jebnoun is a Tunisian-American scholar whose research focuses on cross-border movements, including migration politics, refugees and internal displacement in the Sahara-Sahel region. Plaschke is a journalist and a 2022 graduate of Master of Arts in Arab Studies program at CCAS. This is their first film. En Route to Europe, We Burn or Die was filmed in Tunisia and was selected for the 2025 Festival of Migrant Film Slovene Philanthropy in Slovenia.
About the film:
In the port city of Zarzis in southern Tunisia, the sea has always been a space of mobility. However, Fortress Europe continues to entrench its sea walls and extend proxy borders into North and West Africa, sponsoring local coercive apparatuses. Such measures have turned journeys of hope into deadly crossings, forcing illegalized and irregularized travelers seeking to overcome political, economic and social marginalization in search of better opportunities into increasing violence and risk. Through interviews in and around Zarzis, En Route to Europe, We Burn or Die, weaves together the stories of individuals who are navigating precarity amid deadly border control mechanisms across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.
Watch the trailer for En Route to Europe, We Burn or Die here.