WAR CHILD
JAMIE ROBERTS - CAMERA, PRODUCER & DIRECTOR - 1 HOUR FILM FOR CHANNEL 4 - PRODUCTION COMPANY: LIGHTBOX
"JAMIE ROBERTS’S EXEMPLARY DOCUMENTARY GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, AND BRINGS YOU FACE TO FACE WITH THE INNOCENTS AT THE MERCY OF A BROKEN WORLD.” Guardian
"POWERFUL AND EMOTIVE." Sunday Times
"A DEVASTATING AND PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT FILM THAT LINGERS LONG AFTER THE CREDITS HAVE ROLLED." The Observer
CHANNEL 4 PRESS RELEASE:
From director Jamie Roberts (Jihadis Next Door, Angry White and Proud), and producer Katie Buchanan (The Romanians Are Coming) and double Oscar-winner Simon Chinn (Man on Wire, Searching for Sugar Man), War Child follows three refugee children from the Middle East on their dangerous journeys to what they hope is a new future in Europe.
As the UK debates how best to help refugees from the Middle East, including halting the ‘Dubs scheme’ specifically set up to provide sanctuary to child refugees, and countries such as Germany start to reconsider their previous asylum policies, War Child is a timely reminder of the dangers and hardships child refugees face on their journey.
Documenting the dramatic personal stories of families and unaccompanied children fighting to get to Western Europe against the odds and often illegally, Jamie Roberts is with the children almost every step of the way as they are forced to find dangerous or illicit means to reach loved ones and safety.
Dramatic, visceral and profoundly moving, the story is told entirely from the perspective of the three children, accompanied by a voiceover by Emran, who speaks English.
Emran is 11 and from Afghanistan. He is travelling without his parents and has used smugglers to take him from Iran to Turkey and then on a boat to Greece. He now wants to join his older brother in Germany. His friend Hussein, also from Afghanistan, last saw his mother at the Iran/Turkey border where they became separated as they fled gunfire. His father is dead.
Rawan is one of the lucky ones – if being from Aleppo could be counted as lucky. She’s with her parents and four siblings. As tensions start to rise at the camp, Rawan and her family slip off at night to cross the border surreptitiously and hide from the police in a greenhouse. Back at Idomeni the camp erupts into a full scale riot as refugees try to storm the border with a train carriage and the Greek military are sent in with tear gas.
War Child follows the children as they are smuggled across Europe. It’s a hair-raising journey as they hide on trains, are kidnapped by smugglers and abandoned in the forests of Macedonia – much of it captured on their phones. Will they make it to Western Europe and safety?
UNICEF STATEMENT 03.03.17
"On Sunday 12 March at 10.30pm, a new Channel 4 documentary, War Child, unveils the extraordinary dangers children and families are facing because of Europe's political inaction. The programme follows three refugee children left with little choice but to put their lives into the hands of smugglers if they want to reach loved ones and safety.
This groundbreaking documentary highlights the urgency of our campaign."
