In the midst of the largest refugee crisis of our time, JR’s latest work, a 14-minute-long short film titled Ellis, is a hauntingly shot reminder of the very same, seemingly insurmountable odds and the bravery required to overcome them that immigrants of another age faced in a place much closer to home. The film, written by Academy Award winner Eric Roth, stars the indomitable Robert de Niro recounting the narratives of the 1.2 million immigrants who passed through the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital off the coast of Manhattan, in the years it was open between 1902 and 1954. De Niro traverses the abandoned hospital complex as a lonely figure in the depth of winter, accompanied only by JR’s “Unframed” installation which depicts some of the immigrants to have passed through the island as black-and-white archival photographs pasted to the walls in the street artist’s signature style. Watch the emotive trailer above, and buy tickets for the film’s October 4 premiere at The New Yorker Festival here.
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