Voices that are seldom heard

Navnee Likhi

This year’s Sundance Film Festival premiered Derek Doneen’s documentary Kailash, which won the US Grand Jury Prize. His directorial debut Kailash centres around the life and works of child rights activist and Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, who is also the founder of Children’s Foundation. The documentary follows one man’s journey to do what many believed impossible.

The documentary shows efforts made by activists of Kailash’s foundation in freeing children kept as slaves and help them overcome trauma by lodging them at ashrams run by his foundation. The film also shows how impoverished families are tricked into selling their children. He gave up his career as an engineer and devoted himself to work for the cause of child slavery and formed a charity: Save Childhood Movement. The movement has so far been credited with freeing 80,000 child slaves in India over 30 years.

The documentary opens with Kailash’s activists, along with the police, flunging open the doors of a factory in New Delhi and recovering a group of children who are hidden under piles of trash bags. In the succeeding scenes, Kailash’s team tracks the whereabouts of an abducted boy through the identification of his captors. Meanwhile, two more boys are rescued by the team, and then comes the struggle to reunite the boys with their families. The documentary also reveals the plight of trafficked children, who had been sneaked into factories to do manual labour and also how local government officials are bribed to abet child traffickers. The film was completed in two years.

The film shows countless children across India being trafficked and forced to work as labourers in factories or sold for sexual slavery. For the fear of stigma, the victims often choose not to report to the authorities. Kailash’s family often gets death threats from the traffickers. They help him by leading teams in raiding the hideouts of human traffickers, besides planning to rehabilitate the children. The documentary ends on a note of hope.

Winner of the US Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary, director Alexandra Shiva’s incisive documentary This is Home tells stories of a few Syrian refugee families, who are starting a new life in America. The film shows the struggle of immigrant families as they try to integrate with the American society and adapt to their way of life. The documentary opens with a montage of news broadcast clip, which shows war-torn Syria. This brief clip leads to another scene showing Syrian families living in Jordan in refugee camps before they make it to Baltimore in the USA. The international rescue committee of Baltimore centre provides them assistance for eight months to become self-reliant. At the end of the eighth month, the support is withdrawn. The committee helps these families to learn English language, train them to get  employment, teach them to shop at supermarkets and make sure they get familiar with the use of social media. They are also taught how to use the public transport and seek medical assistance.

War survivor Khaldun works as a taxi driver. He and his wife Yasmeen enrol their four children into an elementary school. Yasmeen is asked to work and she learns to drive a car. Then there’s Iman’s family. His teenage daughters complete their school education. Then there’s Madha’s story, which gives hope to other families. With the help of her American friend, Madha cooks Syrian cuisine for nearly 100 members of a local church. The event is a success and she considers starting her own catering service. It is the human spirit and resilience of these immigrant families who take ridiculous situations they face in their day-to-day lives in their stride. The documentary shows how traumatised and uprooted Syrians, when given an opportunity to live a normal life in a new land, can overcome the challenges of language and culture.

The third documentary Alexandria Bombach’s On Her Shoulders won the Best Direction Award. It is the gripping story of a Yazidi girl Nadia Murad, who was a student when her village Kojo in northern Iraq is captured by the Islamic State in 2014. Her brothers and sisters are killed. Along with hundreds of young women and girls, Nadia is taken a prisoner. Nadia managed to escape and took refuge in the Duhok village in Iraq in 2015. She gave her first testimony to reporters of a Belgian newspaper. Nadia was selected for a programme that took about 1,000 refugees to Germany. The film highlights Nadia Murad briefing the United Nations Security Council on the issue of human trafficking faced by Yazidi women. As she narrates her tale of emotional and physical abuse, her face hardens. Nadia expresses her desire to live a normal life and hopes the same for other Yazidi women.

The documentary opens with scenes of Nadia preparing to brief the UN Security Council under intense media glare. She relives her traumatic experience of being held as a sex slave, suffering burns of half-lit cigarette butts on her body and how she is mercilessly beaten up by her captors. There is a feeling of closure after Nadia ends her speech. 

Meanwhile, Human Rights lawyer Amal Clooney pursues Nadia’s case for legal and other action against the Islamic State commanders. Nadia visits  various countries to promote her cause. She is appointed the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. Most of the enslaved Yazidi women and girls are freed and resettle in different European countries.