Lost Land

Sometimes a film is not really defined by its plot or characters or images but the places your mind goes when you are given space and time to think about the journey being shown to you. There’s no particular extra weight given to the deeply harrowing aspects of the journey compared to the more mundane. You’re just being told this is how it is and you have no choice but to face it.  Today my mind, as well as thinking about the Rohingya people, was stuck on the increasing popularity of the One Nation party in Australia. Something I find overwhelmingly baffling. It has always seemed clear to me that being rich in money and things and security has largely come down to luck. To deny these things to someone based on the fact that they just happened to be born somewhere else has never made sense to me. What does not come down to luck is our choice to engage in community. The thing with that is the more we choose community the more the odds stack in everyone’s favour to have security and things and money and anything else we could dream of.  I fear as our world becomes more segregated in the way we receive information that these stories stay circulating amongst people who already have the knowledge of what’s going on and don’t reach the people who have no awareness. Certainly I’m quite sure the journey of a refugee was not new to any of the film festival crowd. I hope this film reaches audiences that are unaware of the reality of refugees and I hope it reminds them that there is absolutely nothing a child could do that would make them undeserving of the freedom we enjoy.