![]() ![]() With my professional focus on child protection, it was quite frustrating to follow scenes of torture and mistreatment inside labor camps in Cambodia, knowing that these incidents are still happening every day in countries like Eritrea, and that the people I work with today in the camps have either been through the exact same atrocities or have fled their countries to avoid them. ![]() I must say that parts of the movie are hard to watch, especially if you have not read about child soldiers and mistreatment of children in wartime previously. ![]() Realized and directed by Angelina Jolie, UNHCR Special Envoy, the movie is a biographical historical thriller of Cambodian activist Loung Ung who was forced to be a child soldier since the early age of 5 during the Communist Khmer Regime. Inspired by a book with the same title, written by activist Loung Ung, the movie tackles the issue of forced displacement, child encampment and Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Register now: International Migrations (Free online course) First They Killed My Father (2017) Watching those beautiful scenes in places I knew very well and seeing few familiar faces on the screen made me relive beautiful moments I spent in Lesvos with very brave refugees. It was a very emotional experience, especially that I was there on the Greek Island of Lesvos when Ai Wei Wei was filming the documentary. I had no idea what else I would do for the rest of my time in Brussels, or which friends I would meet, but all I knew was that I wanted to watch Human Flow everything else would come later. So, I did not hesitate one moment to book my trip. I could not wait for it to be available locally, and I was lucky to find cheap flights to Brussels during that week. Having a full high quality drone scenery of the biggest refugee camps in the world gives you the impression that you are physically present in the field, especially if you watch it on a big screen, like I did when it was premiered in Brussels in February 2018. One more thing to highlight about this movie is definitely the production quality. It is more like a documentary which follows the migratory situation in different countries around the world. Human Flow is not a fictional movie, which means there is no particular story or protagonist that the audience follows from start to end. The documentary focuses on different regions and countries, especially those which have been notably affected by the biggest numbers of refugee arrivals such as Greece, Turkey, France, Germany, Jordan, Kenya, Iraq… He travelled through 23 countries in different continents to visually capture the reality of the “refugee crisis” in today’s world and bring it to the audience in a very captivating format and in simple words and visuals to explain the phenomenon of displacement to all people. It is the fruit of big efforts of the Chinese contemporary artist and activist Ai Wei Wei who, through this great work, aims at showing to different audiences the root causes behind displacement of people all over the world. If one has time only for one movie to watch about refugees, Human Flow is your go-to choice. Let me put it like this, you have a friend or a family member who often hears about refugees in the world, sees a diverse community or newly-resettled refugees in your community or neighborhood but who has never understood why people from other countries are welcomed in other places around the world, this is the movie to play on a movie night with him/her. Human Flow was the “movie of the refugee crisis” as critics often called it. ![]()
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