The traumatic stories of child refugees living in the UK are told in a series of animated short films aimed at schoolchildren during Refugee Week
It is not news that millions of children worldwide are displaced by war and human rights violations every year; only recently, we heard of the Syrian children being used as human shields in the conflict. With organisations acting as necessary and admirable mouthpieces for them, however, it means that we rarely get to hear from the children themselves. A new series of animated short films, Seeking Refuge, is seeking to change that.
The five films, which look at the experiences of five young people who fled their home countries and sought asylum in the UK, are aimed at nine- to 16-year-olds. They will be broadcast online and on BBC2's Learning Zone to coincide with Refugee Week.
Young female refugees face specific issues. One of the films tells the story of Juliane, now 12, who found herself in an orphanage in Zimbabwe after her mother disappeared. She is now safe in the UK, but the short film deals with her sense of despair and isolation and continuing fear that her mother may disappear again.
Andy Glynne, managing director of Mosaic Films, the Bafta-winning company behind the films, started using the testimony of young refugees living in the UK eight months ago. "We were especially interested in hearing the stories of children – what it felt like, coming into England, settling into a school, shuttling from one culture to another, the culture shock," he says. "But also We're really keen on the idea of other school kids seeing this guy at the back of the classroom, who is a bit different, doesn't speak English, and hoping they can begin to understand a little bit more about what their story is."
They found participants after extensive research and working with key organisations and schools. "The casting process – it's a horrible thing to call it – was making sure we could find children who speak English well enough to understand, can remember and articulate their own experiences and whose way of talking lends itself to visual metaphor," says Glynne. The children were interviewed and their testimony edited down to three- or four-minute narratives. "Before we even started to think about animation, we sent the audio back to the kids and made sure they were happy and made changes where they recommended. There was a strong sense from the beginning that they were fully involved and not going to be misrepresented. It's them telling their unique, specific stories, their narratives."
Mosaic Films previously made the award-winning series Animated Minds, which explored the thoughts of people living with mental illness. "My background before I was a filmmaker was clinical psychology, so there's a bias towards [making] films that explore people's emotions and feelings," he says. "[Animated Minds] kind of put me in this niche of making animated docs which lend themselves to certain subject matter. Especially when you want to maintain anonymity of the individual but also when you're trying to give a strong sense of visual metaphor about the experiences they've had, but can't film."
Glynne says the aims of the films are clear: "At the very least I hope that it increases awareness within children," he says. "It's about showing engagement, empathy and understanding of what it's like for people who are fleeing their own homelands because of persecution." He also hopes that it will make children aware of global issues: "What citizenship means, what happens about human rights. Immigration is not the Daily Mail view of the world – people have incredibly traumatic stories and we need to hear those stories rather than the tabloid headlines."
Seeking Refuge will be broadcast on BBC2 Learning Zone, and on bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/