The most unsafe passage to Europe has claimed 18,000 victims. Who speaks for them? | Lorenzo Tondo

As Europe outsources its border policing to Libya, rescue operations by NGOs are hampered by criminal inquiries in Italy

Earlier this year, in June, somewhere in the vast expanse of the central Mediterranean, a Medecins Sans Frontieres team on board a rescue vessel received a distress call. The motor of a small boat carrying asylum seekers from Libya had broken down, and the vessel was taking in water.

These are the first dramatic scenes in Unsafe Passage - a Guardian Documentaries film by Ed Ou for the Outlaw Ocean Project, released today - but they are also the first moments in a race against time that repeats itself again and again in the stretch of sea separating Europe from Africa.