How to Get to Barcelona or Die Trying: Postcolonial Poverty and Migration in Moussa Touré’s La Pirogue

This essay examines Senegalese director Moussa Touré’s film Goor Fitt / La Pirogue (2012), which shows how and why ordinary West Africans are willing to risk life and limb to cross the Atlantic in the colorful wooden fishing boats known as pirogues in order to reach Spain’s Canary Islands and thereby gain entry into Europe. In the process, the essay examines the film’s intertexts in order to analyze the film’s anti-migration message.