‘The Last Shore’ review: The aftermath of the tragic death of a Gambian migrant

Dir: Jean-Francois Ravagnan. Belgium/France/Qatar. 2024. 71mins

The Last Shore goes beyond the headlines to reclaim a life lost in tragic circumstances. Jean-Francois Ravagnan’s absorbing debut feature combines anguished family testimony and mournful images to piece together the story of Pateh Sabally, a Gambian migrant who drowned in Venice’s Grand Canal in 2017. Pateh’s story is representative of countless other migrants, turning the documentary into an elegy for a lost generation. Festival programmers should respond to a heartbreaking film that illuminates and personalises wider global issues. 

Relies on deeply felt emotion to make an impact

Ravagnan previously worked as a second assistant director (The Kid With A Bike, 2011) and a first assistant director (Playground, 2021) for some notable talents while also making his own shorts, including Rise (2015) which played at Locarno. That experience shows in a respectful, empathetic debut feature that makes the most of its brief running time.

It begins with phone footage from January 22nd 2017, of 22 year-old Pateh floundering in the Venice waters. Bystanders hurl racist taunts from the safety of their tourist boats. Nobody dives in to rescue him, nobody alerts the emergency services. Eventually lifebelts are thrown, but he sinks below the surface and drowns. We never see him again in the documentary. There are no photographic reminders, no further footage, no newspaper reports of the death and its aftermath. Was it suicide? His physical absence and the mystery surrounding his death are the guiding forces of the documentary.

Ravagnan then shifts the focus to Gambia, and the village of Dembanding. Pateh’s surviving family feel his absence acutely. His mother, father and elder brother Yerro share memories. “In this village, all the sons left,” explains his mother. Gradually, we learn that Pateh had left for Libya, made his way to Italy and then Malta, securing the odd cleaning job, suffering from deteriorating mental health. Every step along the way feels like a stripping away of his humanity until he is one more face in the crowd of migrants heading into Europe. The desire to provide a better life for his family is a goal that he cannot surrender. 

The family members speak of loss, grief and guilt over how Pateh’s life turned out. They are haunted by questions. How was he living? What was he eating? Where was he sleeping? Yerro paid for him to go to Libya, and believes he should have been the one to leave Gambia. 

Ravagnan plays the uninterrupted family testimonies over bleak images. He lets the camera linger and brood to emphasise the feeling of absence. Yerro sits staring at the ground as rain falls. Buildings lie in ruins, city streets are deserted by night, vast seas stretch towards the horizon, ominous skies hover menacingly. No people are ever present. Pateh could have seen and experienced all this on his travels. Perhaps it is his ghost that is revisiting them now. 

Pateh’s story might have been approached as a conventional detective narrative, following his trail from Gambia to Libya and then Italy, revisiting the places he stayed, talking to those he might have met and interviewing anyone present in Venice at the time of his death. Ravagnan does record the words of one friend who shared a flat with Pateh as he fell ill, stopped eating and “cried all the time”. But. generally, his approach is more abstract, relying on deeply felt emotion to make an impact. It is not the details of Pateh’s short life that truly matter but the void left by his senseless death.