Output details

The Road: A Story of Life and Death

The Road: A Story of Life and Death is a 75-minute documentary funded by the BBC and the Irish Film Board. It premiered at the BFI International London Film Festival in 2012 and was broadcast on BBC4 Storyville in 2013. It also received theatrical distribution and DVD release through Verve Pictures. The project was conceived, filmed and directed by Marc Isaacs.

The film looks at the lives of various immigrants, from different generations and ethnic backgrounds, living along the A5 (a road stretching from London to the Welsh coast) and sets out to investigate, and shed light upon, the meaning of migration, place and identity for them. In so doing, the documentary examines some of the hidden aspects, and complexities, of ‘multicultural’ Britain by revealing the individual stories underpinning migration (whether forced or voluntary) and exploring the personal and psychological consequences of displacement, and a sense of ‘in-betweenness’, for those involved.

In order to engage with the experiential dimensions of migration, the film also departs from traditional forms of television journalism and observational documentary in favour of more experimental - ‘participant observation’ - methods of documentary filming. This approach involved Isaacs developing relationships of trust and intimacy with the people in the film prior to shooting and then interacting with them during the actual making of the film. In this way, he was not only able to gain access to places that would normally remain hidden from view but also to uncover feelings and emotions that would otherwise be difficult to ‘document’. In this respect, his work involves the testing of new methods of documentary in order to generate new insights regarding the specific experiences of the migrant (as well as more general themes of belonging and isolation).