“Human Flow,” a film about the global human refugee crisis, will be shown at Harbor Theater on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m., and Friday, Feb. 9 at 2 p.m. On Thursday, free refreshments will be served starting at 6:30.

We all live in a world of instantaneous news, and we see photos every day on television of refugee camps and the last family trying to board a boat for freedom from famine or war. But do we really understand the giant proportions and impact of the refugee crisis worldwide?

Whether they are fleeing from political persecution, war, famine or climate change, more than 65 million people have been forced from their homes in the last 20 years, and the numbers are growing.

Filmmaker Ai Wei Wei, the Chinese artist and political dissident now living in Berlin, has made an eye-opening and at the same time beautiful film about just that: immigration around the world.

Over the course of one year, in 23 countries, Ai Wei Wei takes more than 200 crew members and a half-dozen drone operators on a journey across the world, filming movements of people in Afghanistan, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, and even the U.S.

But not only does he show us the staggering scale of this movement from drone shots above, he gets down on the ground and talks to people in refugee camps, along coastlines and in towns, bringing profoundly personal stories to us, and the impact of that movement on individual lives.

“Human Flow” is a galvanizing account of the refugee crisis. It will leave us with only more questions about how we as a nation, and we as individuals, can make a difference to these people who must start again to make a home in a country that is not their own.

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote, “This movie, a testament to the power of seeing, provides a long and uncommonly vivid look at a human crisis that’s changing the face of our planet.”