Gabrielle Brady’s powerful portrait of the lives of asylum seekers warehoused on Christmas Island is fierce and compassionate
Film-maker Gabrielle Brady tells a powerful and moving story from inside Australia’s Guantánamo: Christmas Island, the country’s offshore territory near Java, where asylum seekers and boat people are warehoused in grim conditions that the authorities are in no hurry to conceal – because of the deterrent factor, an important part of the government’s anti-migrant crackdown since 2013. (The similar Manus Island facility has now been closed but the equally grisly Nauru is still in business.)
Poh Lin Lee is a torture and trauma counsellor permitted to give therapy to detainees, who are terrifyingly scarred mentally. These sessions have been reconstructed as filming current detainees was not possible; conversations take place with migrants who have been released. Brady could perhaps have made that point clearer (there is a self-evidently imagined sequence...
Film-maker Gabrielle Brady tells a powerful and moving story from inside Australia’s Guantánamo: Christmas Island, the country’s offshore territory near Java, where asylum seekers and boat people are warehoused in grim conditions that the authorities are in no hurry to conceal – because of the deterrent factor, an important part of the government’s anti-migrant crackdown since 2013. (The similar Manus Island facility has now been closed but the equally grisly Nauru is still in business.)
Poh Lin Lee is a torture and trauma counsellor permitted to give therapy to detainees, who are terrifyingly scarred mentally. These sessions have been reconstructed as filming current detainees was not possible; conversations take place with migrants who have been released. Brady could perhaps have made that point clearer (there is a self-evidently imagined sequence...
- 1/10/2019
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The lives of refugees detained by the Australia government on remote Christmas Island are the focus of a powerful yet poetic new documentary
Five years ago, Gabrielle Brady, an Australian film-maker, decided to visit an old friend who had moved to remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The tiny tropical Australian territory was only settled a century ago, when phosphate, deposited as guano by seabirds, was mined by Chinese and Malay labourers. Its latest industry, however, was the controversial “offshore processing” of refugees. For the past 17 years, asylum seekers reaching Australia’s shores by boat have been dispatched to island detention centres and detained there indefinitely.
Brady’s arrival on holiday gave her friend, Poh Lin Lee, a break from her difficult job on Christmas Island, providing therapy for traumatised detainees. “We spent two weeks enjoying this beautiful environment – diving with dolphins, looking for whale sharks, going to really remote beaches,...
Five years ago, Gabrielle Brady, an Australian film-maker, decided to visit an old friend who had moved to remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The tiny tropical Australian territory was only settled a century ago, when phosphate, deposited as guano by seabirds, was mined by Chinese and Malay labourers. Its latest industry, however, was the controversial “offshore processing” of refugees. For the past 17 years, asylum seekers reaching Australia’s shores by boat have been dispatched to island detention centres and detained there indefinitely.
Brady’s arrival on holiday gave her friend, Poh Lin Lee, a break from her difficult job on Christmas Island, providing therapy for traumatised detainees. “We spent two weeks enjoying this beautiful environment – diving with dolphins, looking for whale sharks, going to really remote beaches,...
- 1/3/2019
- by Patrick Barkham
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.