From Manus to London: how two strangers made a landmark movie together
This weekend, audiences at the London Film Festival will watch a film about the men detained on Manus Island
Behind this film lies a tale about a friendship and a creative partnership, formed across oceans, between two people who are yet to…
In mid-2016, Netherlands-based Iranian filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani planned to make a film about children and their feelings for the sea.
At the same time, he began hearing of the immigration detention centres on Manus and in Nauru, and the children marooned there.
He asked himself: Would these children view the sea with love, or as a…
Sarvestani tried to find an asylum seeker on Nauru willing to interview the children about their relationship to the sea. No one wanted to take it on.
The detainees feared for their families and…