WORLD BRIDGE BLOG

Last week, Refugees International and the International Rescue Committee were co-presenters of a documentary about Iraqi refugees at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City.  The Unreturned is a powerful depiction of the lives of five Iraqis as they struggle to begin again in Syria and Jordan after fleeing violence in Iraq.

“Caught in the midst of violence, endless bureaucracy, dwindling life savings, and forced idleness, these Iraqis nevertheless radiate vitality, warmth and hope,” says the film’s description.

Filmmaker Nathan Fisher has created a candid film with moving depictions of the lives of middle-class Iraqi refugees which are in various ways relatable to so many of our own lives.  I spoke to a handful of attendees after the first screening, and they all remarked with similar sentiment: “that could be me”.  The stories that Fisher follows in his film are not the overly-dramatized ones we find most media sources interested in telling.  These are the lives of every-day people - a chef, a researcher, a young boy - who have the opportunity to share their own stories, in their own voices, with a wider audience.  And often I find these to be the most moving stories when they’re given the space and time to develop beyond soundbites.

I bet you’ve heard organizations that work on humanitarian issues talk at least once about “giving a voice to the voiceless” -- we here at Refugees International are certainly guilty of using that phrase on occasion.  But what The Unreturned so poignantly demonstrates is that we are not speaking about “voiceless” individuals whatsoever.  As you listen to these Iraqi refugees reminisce about their former lives in Iraq, as they talk about their increasing frustration with their lack of access to legal work, education, health care and other opportunities, and as they speak of hope for a better future for their families, you can’t help but be acutely aware that “voiceless” is a descriptive adjective that needs to be retired.

The medium of feature-length documentary, of course, forces filmmakers to edit and reduce hours upon hours of footage -- of remarkable stories -- into about 75 minutes.  At Refugees International we, too, have to take weeks upon weeks of our work, interviews and assessments in the field and reduce it down into a single report, with bullet-point policy recommendations.  But even after all the edits were made, what was core to The Unreturned was the intent to have the predominant narrative voice be that of the Iraqis themselves.  This, too, is what drives Refugees International’s work -- reporting based on direct interviews of and storytelling by refugees and displaced people.

Perhaps this runs against the grain of the 140-character Twitter-based world that we live in, but we cannot fall into the trap of using simple, inaccurate soundbite explanations for complex issues.  What we must strive to do is be sure mediums exist - in documentary, radio, written narratives, etc. - that allow the voices of the vociferous (has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?) to be heard by us all.