A hoodie, pants, a belt. That’s what little is left of #387, one of the 800 migrants who perished on April 18, 2015 off the Libyan coast. On the military base in Melilli, Sicily, forensic pathologist Cristina Cattaneo leads the largest identification operation ever undertaken to date in the Mediterranean region. For the April 18, 2015 disaster, she listed at least 15 countries of origin. On the field, in the smallest villages of West Africa, ICRC’s anthropologist Jose Pablo Baraybar meets the families who lost someone to collect every possible ante mortem information. From both sides of the Mediterranean Sea, our characters gradually converge into the matrix of the search for identity. The film embraces their promise to help the families of the missing to find closure and put a name on a grave. What is so unique about this “treasure of identity”? What’s the value of one’s life? Who are they? Who are we? Who will we be together?

#387 is the starting point of the campaign #numbersintonames aimed at promoting the right to identity and dignity, after death, for all the victims of the Mediterranean crossings. It will stand for the rights of their families to know. Together, we can turn more numbers into names.