Sydney – Sydney Film Festival

Kjartansdóttir’s intelligent adaptation of Auður Jonsdottir’s 2006 novel looks at the relatively new phenomenon of immigration in Iceland. After quitting her newspaper job, Gisella decides to write about meaningful topics, such as the terrible living conditions of migrant women Marisol, Abeba and Luna. Her decision to invite them into her house frames a rewarding drama about idealism, respect and the priceless human quality of empathy.

Filmmaker Hassan Fazili was forced to leave Afghanistan when he made a television documentary featuring a Taliban leader who’d abandoned violence. Hassan, his filmmaker wife Fatima and their two young daughters fled for their lives. Using mobile phones, the family recorded their experiences as they reeled from one country to another, often waiting months for the outcome of yet another visa application. Nargis, Zahra, and their parents start out buoyant but the pressures of spending day after day in refugee camps soon take their toll. This vérité film reveals the tragedy and the horror of the family’s lengthy pursuit of asylum, particularly poignant when seen through the lens of the two young girls.

Khaled was born Iraqi but raised in the Netherlands by his journalist father. At 18, he travelled to Baghdad to visit his sick mother, and ended up working as an interpreter for the Coalition Forces. As insurgent violence escalated, he tried to leave but his Dutch papers were not in order. Khaled was suddenly someone to be feared and treated inhumanely: he spends the next ten years as a refugee travelling the world trying to find sanctuary.