A scene for Island of the Hungry Ghosts (Tribeca Film Festival)

This haunting documentary starts off with a scream and ends with defeated silence and in between offers an unflinching look at mental and emotional breakdowns. Set on remote Christmas Island, which is located more than 900 miles from the northwestern coast of Australia, it revolves around a therapist who works at a detention center for migrants. The people there need her skills, but it’s hard to give people a sense of hope when their day-to-day existences are otherwise full of dehumanizing treatment and uncertainty over what will happen to them.

The therapist’s name is Poh Lin, and director Gabrielle Brady is a fly on the wall during her sessions with detainees. There is a sand tray and toys on-hand in her office, and most of her patients use them, either to make symbolic representations of the lives they left behind or to express how they feel in the present. These scenes seem to occur in real time, and they highlight just how good Poh Lin is at her job as she talks them into opening up about themselves or walks them back if they start to become despairing. Unfortunately, the latter happens more and more often.

The film reminds us repeatedly that these aren’t captured enemy combatants that Poh Lin counsels but desperate people who fled violence and persecution, only to be locked up without any timetable for release. The poor conditions they describe to her include mistreatment by the guards. Even worse is the forced separation from their loved ones. It’s especially stressful for one detainee, yet despite Poh Lin’s recommendation to her superiors to reunite him with his family, nothing is done, and he continues to deteriorate.

Given that the imprisoned migrants are largely unable to exert their own wills, the narrative generally belongs to Poh Lin, who must decide whether to continue doing work that provides a valuable human connection but may not be of lasting assistance. As she tells a co-worker, no matter how much constructive therapy she provides, she inevitably watches her clients fall apart; or, the visitations end without any explanation. The emotional toll on Poh Lin is apparent in the glimpses of her home life, in which she seems lethargic and depressed. She still spends time with her husband and their two angelic daughters, although the latter unwittingly cause her to revisit her conundrum, as they ask her questions about work.

The film takes its name from the Chinese who were brought to Christmas Island at the turn of the 20th century to work in the mines as indentured servants, and who did not receive proper burials after they died. Their descendants burn offerings to appease their ancestors’ “hungry ghosts,” and while the depiction of these rituals is simultaneously solemn and fascinating, it ties into a larger theme that the island is full of spirits caught between worlds who yearn to escape from limbo and reach their destination. To that end, Brady frequently cuts away to shots of the jungle, the ruins of buildings, the detention center, alternately searching for ghosts and simulating the world through their eyes.

There are also hordes of red crabs slowly migrating across the island. A certain irony does not appear lost on the filmmakers, in that local officials bend over backwards to accommodate these creatures. At various points, a crew that includes Poh Lin carefully sweeps them off a busy road, creates makeshift bridges so they can cross a ditch, and zigzags dramatically in their vehicles to avoid running them over. The crabs are fascinating subjects to observe in and of themselves, but one cannot help being reminded of how much worse human migrants are treated here.

This film is a powerful call for change regarding how Australia treats those who cross its borders seeking asylum. Here in America, where the anti-immigrant rhetoric has reached a fever pitch, it’s relevant viewing, if only to remind ourselves that other “civilized” countries have attitudes that are every bit as troublesome as ours.