Directed by Batoul Karbijha • Documentary • 2023 • 55 minutes

Filmmaker Batoul Karbijha uses making a film about her disappeared sister as a means of finding out what happened and as a way of dealing with it. For herself, for her family and for all families who lost loved ones on their way to a better future.

Batoul's search takes her from Sicily to Tunisia and to Libya, and confronts her with graveyards full of missing migrants, in a labyrinth of ignorance, indifference and powerlessness.

Batoul's search for her sister also results in a confrontation with her family. They have built a new life in the Netherlands, but 24 August 2014 remains a date on which their lives have been torn apart. It will never be the same again. For years, they have not been able to talk about Maysoon and they silently refuse to accept that she may no longer be there. For Batoul, the search for what happened to her sister is also a means to be able to talk about Maysoon with her family. An intimate process in which loss, pain and hope alternate, depending on the outcome of her search. While Maysoons presence in the family - despite her absence - takes on a more concrete form, Batoul's dual role as sister and filmmaker seems to become increasingly more complicated.

The story of Batoul's search for her missing sister tells a bigger story. Since 2014, 24.495 migrants (according to Missing Migrants Project) have disappeared on the Mediterranean while on their way to a better life. Most of them drowned, but for many even that outcome is uncertain. They are lost at sea. All these missing people have families they left behind. Families and friends who have to find a way to cope. This film tries to create a picture of the immense pain that lies behind these figures.