Document HRFF: This is Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees

This is Exile (2015, France/Turkey)
Dir. Mani

‘This is Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees’ is an overwhelming, intimate portrait of children forced to flee from the violence of Syria’s civil war to neighbouring Lebanon. Filmed over the course of a year, the documentary tells the stories of the childrens' lives in their own words and captures the moving truth of how they deal with loss, hardship and the poignancy of dashed hopes. Their testimony in this film is a beautifully crafted microcosm of the human cost of the ongoing civil war in Syria that has forced over 4 million people to flee; half of whom are children. With its poetic visual style, there is space for the mind to wander through the film’s locations and to understand the profoundly disturbing truth that these children are unlikely to see their homeland again until adulthood. A resoundingly relevant film in today's refugee crisis.

This film will be introduced and co-presented by the Campaign to Welcome Refugees.
Nominated for the International Jury Prize.