"You can always get off the boat: but off the Ocean, that's something else again", notes Alesandro Barrico in his novel Ocean Sea (1993). For decades, the phrase "Drinking the Sea" has been used as a metaphor to describe clandestine immigration from Africa to Europe and the dangerous risks that migrants undertake in the effort to improve their lives. Today, over 70 million people are displaced from their homelands. Using films as well as readings by leading African scholars, students will consider the depth and scope of migration and displacement. Among the key questions we will explore are: How does migration affect the storytelling of African filmmakers? Is film an effective artistic medium for influencing sociopolitical policy in countries dealing with migrant crises? Students will emerge from the course with the skills to understand clandestine migration in terms of the world's geopolitical and economic systems in which we live.