David Fedele has spent the better part of two decades making films the mainstream film industry would not make, about people it would rather not think about, in places it would rather not go. This Jungo Life is his most radical work yet — and the most intimate.
The film takes its name from the people at its centre. “Jungo” is a term traditionally given to seasonal agricultural workers from Sudan, now adopted by the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants making the long and dangerous journey northward across the African continent. Fedele met a group of them in Rabat, Morocco in June 2023 — young men from Sudan and South Sudan who had fled violence and instability in Libya and found themselves stranded, sleeping rough on the streets of the Moroccan capital, unable to go home and unable to reach Europe, drawn to Rabat by the presence of the UNHCR and the faint possibility of being granted refugee status. Some hoped to make it across the heavily militarised fences into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta or Melilla. Most were simply trying to survive.
What makes the film exceptional is not just its subject matter but its method. This Jungo Life was filmed entirely on mobile phones, by the refugees themselves, in collaboration with Fedele. The result is something that could not have been achieved any other way — unguarded, unmediated, shot from inside the experience rather than observing it from without. It is a film made with its subjects rather than about them, and that distinction runs through every frame.
The film won Best Film on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights at the Bir Duino International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in 2024, and has since screened widely across Europe. Fedele has continued to support the Jungo community directly following the film’s completion, renting a house in Rabat to help get refugees off the streets.
David Fedele is a close friend and long-standing collaborator of Dancing Turtle. Beyond filmmaking, he is a gifted pianist and composer whose cinematic, contemplative productions are well worth your time — you can find them on his YouTube channel. This Jungo Life is the kind of filmmaking we exist to support. Watch the trailer and find screening information at thisjungolife.com.
