In This World
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
With Jamal Udin, Torabi Enayatullah and Imran Paracha
Screening nationally at Dendy cinemas
REVIEW BY TIM STEWART
In these times, when rich-country governments lock out or lock up refugees, In This World is the kind of wake-up call that's needed. It is a riveting story that adheres very close to the truth about the life-and-death risks refugees must take as they seek the promise of freedom — a very empty promise, as this film reveals.
Filmed in a documentary style, In This World begins in February 2002 in a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan — where 50,000 mainly Afghan people, who have fled their country after decades of civil war and repression, exist.
We are very quickly drawn into a family's plan to send teenager Jamal and his older cousin Enayat off to seek a better life. The family's life savings are given to people smugglers. As he leaves, you feel Jamal's icy grief as he realises that it may be the last time he ever sees his toddler brother Aman, who runs after him like a puppy. Jamal's family, too, may never see their son again.
Desperation and death haunts much of this tense story. It doesn't so much upset you, but makes you angry that all of this would be preventable or reversible, if it wasn't for the cruelty of capitalism.
Jamal and Enayat's trip is very dizzying to begin with, as they tramp through bazaars, bus stations and dust storms. Through their journey's twists and turns, we experience the boys' changing fortunes and the perils they must face, as they attempt to buy the cooperation of border guards and deal with assorted crooks. At one point, after a humiliating shake-down, Iranian border guards simply truck the two back to the deserts of northern Pakistan.
After handing more US dollars to people smugglers, Jamal and Enayat make their way through Iran, Turkey and France. They are shipped like animals, locked in a container for 40 hours straight along with other human "cargo". Even though speaking many different languages, the refugees all share the dream of reaching "freedom" in London.
Governments and the corporate media routinely dehumanise refugees, referring to them as "illegals". In This World presents a different picture of ordinary people trying to survive in a world not of their own making. Despite their own desperate plight, the boys can still help a beggar. With such displays of humanity and humour, In This World demolishes the arguments peddled by Western governments that the world's 14 million refugees somehow deserve their fate.
Spectacular music underscores the storyline of the movie, which takes place against a backdrop of breathtaking scenery. Stark desert landscapes are fitting symbols of the brutal treatment the ever-hopeful young refugees must face.
Michael Winterbottom avoids all the bluff and bullshit that so often passes for "public debate" about asylum seekers by presenting a simple moral, firmly based on reality. Rather than bury the audience in tragedy and sorrow, this very personalised account of two refugees convinces us that the situation facing refugees needs to be urgently addressed.
The film's promotional literature points out that "after filming, the real-life Jamal made his own refugee journey to England and is currently campaigning for permission to stay in London. The film briefly carried the title 'M1187511', a reference to his (British) home office visa application number."
From Green Left Weekly, November 19, 2003.
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