In June 2020, the video of a young Senegalese man leaping off a bridge to save an elderly man who had fallen into the River Nervión went viral. Soon after, an online petition began circulating on Spanish websites seeking to grant Mouhammed Diof special legal residency, reigniting calls for the government to provide tens of thousands of young North African immigrants pathways for legal immigration.

illustrator-director German Andino and aspiring filmmaker Mouhammed Diof animate his terrifying journey on the open seas from Senegal to the coastal town of Tarifa, where he reaches land, to Bilbao, where an instinctive act of selflessness makes him a symbol for social change.

Euskadi, Spain

El Héroe Senegalés (The Senegalese Hero)

A nurse and doctor working in hospitals on the frontlines in Bilbao, Spain recount the harrowing outbreak of COVID-19, lay bare the fears, isolation and despair they experienced while treating the initial wave of patients with substandard protective equipment and little preparation. This project is an intimate and timely look into the physical, emotional and psychosocial traumas that the pandemic inflicted on emergency medical personnel in one of the hardest hit regions of the world.

Second-Hand Normalities

African musicians, painters and storytellers in Spain's northern Basque region use art and film to illustrate clandestine journeys of migration and the precarity of survival on the peripheries of society in Europe.

Bilbao Media Lab