On Christmas Island, the ground itself seems to move each year as millions of red crabs leave the jungle and cross roads, cliffs, and beaches to reach the sea, an ancient migration called forth by the pull of the full moon. This spectacle of instinct and renewal unfolds against another, hidden reality: deep within the same forest stands a high-security detention centre where asylum seekers are held indefinitely, their lives suspended in limbo. Poh Lin, a trauma counsellor living on the island, listens to their stories and bears witness to the slow unraveling of minds caught in endless waiting.
The film holds these parallel worlds in fragile balance, the unstoppable rhythm of the crabs, the suffocating stillness of the centre, revealing how landscapes carry both mythic beauty and human despair. Through gestures of care, ritual, and silence, Island of the Hungry Ghosts becomes a meditation on migration in its many forms: the instinct to move, the right to seek refuge, and the cost of being held in place when the world itself is in motion.
