The famed Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei shot his footage for Human Flow using iPhones and drones and other accessible technologies, while traveling and shaping this evolving narrative on the vast topic of human migration. Ai Weiwei witnessed the human drama over the course of a year, in camps and open spaces through twenty-three countries—from the Kenyan refugee crisis to encampments in Bangladesh, Turkey, and Afghanistan, to the border between Mexico and the United States. His purpose in undertaking this enormously challenging project was in part to better grasp the complexities of the global refugee situation and to speculate on how mass migration is changing the world. The resulting film is not only powerful, it is constructed as a boldly poetic statement on injustice and impermanence, and on civilization itself. “I was a child refugee, I know how it feels to live in a camp. . . Refugees must be seen to be an essential part of our shared humanity.” (Ai Weiwei, 2017, 140 minutes)