Film Review: “This Jungo Life”

Vicky Taylor (she/her) is a DPhil Candidate at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, and Associate Director of Border Criminologies. She reviews this film in advance of the London Migration Film Festival 2024. The festival aims to portray the diversity and humanity of migration. The film’s UK premiere will be at the London Migration Film Festival on the 26th November (6.30pm) in SOAS’s Khalili Lecture Theatre. 

Film Review: “This Jungo Life” 2024, by David Fedele and the Jungo of Rabat

‘This Jungo Life’ follows a group of young men from Sudan and South Sudan as they try to survive, first without shelter in Morocco, and then on journeys to Europe. Produced in collaboration with people on the move, this film captures the everyday violence experienced by those seeking safety in North Africa. It raises critical questions both for the countries the Jungo travel through (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria), but on the complicity of the UNHCR, in failing to provide real protection, and European countries, in funding anti-migrant measures in the region. 

The term ‘jungo’ was originally used in Sudan to describe seasonal agricultural workers who would leave their homes in search of work. Now, it has been adopted by those leaving the country in search of safety and a better life. As the film explained, more than 10 million people have been displaced in Sudan in 2023 and 2024 alone, in response to famine and conflict, particularly after April 2023.  

Dispossession and dispersal 

The film begins with a group of ‘Jungo’ preparing for Eid in an area of wasteland in Rabat, Morocco. We are introduced to Abubakr, one of the films main protagonists and assistant director. He explains that he left Sudan 5 or 6 years ago, and hopes to reach Europe to study and make a better life for himself. Arriving in Rabat, he sought protection from the UNHCR, which is responsible for the registration and determination of asylum claims in the country. 

However, rather than protection, he explains how both he and his friends experienced hostility, homelessness, and harassment. In Morocco, he explains “I am afraid of the police. They pursue us everywhere and we don’t have a place to go”. They explain how the police routinely destroy or confiscate their belongings, including vital items such as food, blankets, and money. “Even in this place where people shit and piss they don’t leave us alone”, Ayman explains. The targeting of Black, African migrants by Moroccan police has been well documented by both human rights organisations, as well as academics (see for example, the work of Sofia El Arabi, Lorena Gazzotti, Maria Hagan, and Amnesty International).  

In addition to dispossession, the film describes the forced arrest and dispersal of migrants from Rabat and other cities to the desert, far away from the border. “One night we were sleeping”, explains Abubakr, “and the police broke into our place at dawn… they deported us to Tiznit, too many kilometres away (600km)”.  

As Lorena Gazzotti and Maria Hagan explain, after an increase in border crossings via the Western Mediterranean route in 2018, arrests and dispersal campaigns escalated in Morocco, supported by the Spanish. This practice has been criticised by human rights organisations as “not compliant with any valid legal framework, and does not respond to any procedure foreseen by Moroccan law” (GADEM). The film therefore captures the human impact not only of the EU’s efforts to keep migrants in North Africa (externalisation), but also of how this affects the day-to-day lives of those homeless in Rabat (internalisation). Those perceived as ‘migrant’ can be arrested not only at the border, but also at bus stops, or from inside their makeshift homes. 

During filming, Abubakr is arrested again and his friends do not hear from him for several days. When he returns, he explains that he was arrested despite showing them his UNHCR documents, put onto a bus, and moved to a peripheral town in the desert. The cost of this event on him, in both economic and emotional terms, is clear. Soon after, he decides he cannot stay in Morocco any longer. A politics of exhaustion is at work here, clearly and painfully articulated by the film’s protagonists.  “The most important thing”, they emphasise, “is not to waste your time”.  

Threaded throughout the film is a critique of the UNHCR and its failure to provide meaningful protection in the country. “They give us this document but it doesn't protect us”, reflected Abubakr, “They said: 'No, you won't be detained.' But I told them I have many friends who have been detained with this document.” Registering as an asylum seeker fails to provide protection against either dispossession or arrest and dispersal. 

Filmed ten years after Morocco’s ‘New Migration Policy’ was announced, intended to bring in a more ‘humane’ regime, the film is a powerful critique of the failures and violences not only of Morocco’s contemporary approach to migration, but of the UNHCR, and EU’s externalisation regime. 

Production 

‘This Jungo Life’ is a good example of sensitive co-production. In a later interview, Abubakr explained how his collaboration with David came about: “I had an idea of making a film. When I left Sudan, I wanted to document my migration journey. I started filming but I lost my telephone in Libya at the border… I met David in Morocco. ... I consulted with everyone and they agreed to make a film in collaboration with David, so we could benefit from knowing him. On the basis that he could film us and deliver a finished film…The truth is, we are very tired, and filming in Morocco is very difficult”. 

Indeed, as David has also subsequently explained, filmmakers require authorisation to shoot in Morocco. Knowing that his request would likely be declined, the film is entirely produced using phone footage, either from his own iPhone or the phones of his collaborators. While I had expected more original footage from the phones of people on the move, the film explains this absence well, detailing when phones were stolen, often by authorities, along with their footage. 

This film is an impressive feat in this hostile context. I recommend it to anyone concerned with internal bordering practices in North Africa, EU externalisation, and with the lived experience of continual cycles of dispossession and dispersal.  

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