On the streets of Rabat, a group of young men from Sudan and South Sudan are sleeping rough, waiting. They call themselves “Jungo” – a name traditionally given to seasonal agricultural workers from Sudan, now adopted by refugees, asylum seekers and migrants on the road. Most have arrived in Morocco since 2020, forced to flee violence and instability in Libya, unable to return home due to ongoing war and conflict. They are drawn to the capital seeking refugee status from the UNHCR, and many dream of crossing the heavily militarised fences into Sebta or Melilla – Spanish enclaves on the African coast, and the closest thing to Europe they can imagine.
This Jungo Life is a human rights documentary that tells their story from the inside. Produced in collaboration with the refugees themselves and filmed entirely on smartphones, the film offers raw and unfiltered access to lives that rarely make it onto any screen. It is a portrait of resilience in the face of suffering – of people navigating one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes, fighting for a better life for themselves and the families they left behind. The film won the Grand Prize for Best International Documentary at the Festiwal Filmowy NNW in Poland and Best Documentary at the Bantu Film Festival in Botswana, among numerous other international awards.
This Jungo Life is the third in David Fedele’s documentary trilogy exploring the human stories behind refugee migration between the African and European continents, following The Land Between (2014) and Revenir (2017). Like its predecessors, the film was independently produced and self-funded, outside the system of conventional film production and funding.
