Island of the Hungry Ghosts

Christmas Island is a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, dense with jungle and home to millions of land crabs, who every year migrate from the island’s interior to its rugged coastline.

 

The island is also home to Australia’s largest offshore detention facility, in which over 800 asylum seekers are currently indefinitely detained.

 

Trauma counsellor Poh Lin Lee is an inhabitant of the island and one of the inmates’ only links to the outside world. This hybrid film, which won Best Documentary at Tribeca, hauntingly shifts its focus from Lin’s work with her clients to the relentless drive of the migrating crabs as they make their journey from the jungle to the sea.