A remarkable film documenting one family’s flight to freedom from the Taliban will be screened at the Lennox Head Cultural Centre on June 18 at 7.30pm. It’s an extraordinary, uplifting story of courage and unbreakable love.
The event is a fundraiser for Ballina Region for Refugees.
In 2015, the lives of filmmaker Hassan Fazili, his wife Fatima, and two young daughters changed forever when they were forced to leave their home in Kabul, Afghanistan. After Fazili’s documentary about a former Taliban commander who had renounced the cause aired on Afghan TV, the commander was murdered, and Fazili discovers the Taliban have put a bounty on his head.
The family flee to Tajikistan and thus begins a three-year, 5,600-km flight from Afghanistan to Germany. Capturing the family’s uncertain journey first-hand, Fazili documents their harrowing trek across numerous borders, revealing the danger and uncertainty facing refugees seeking asylum, juxtaposed with the unbreakable love shared amongst the family on the run. The footage ultimately became Fazili’s extraordinary film Midnight Traveler.
Prior to 2015 Fazili had led a modern artist’s life, despite the ongoing and seemingly endless war. Self-taught, he worked in theatre, television and film as a director and cinematographer. He also helped his wife Fatima Hussaini, who had not been allowed to attend school, in her own filmmaking.
The couple associated with other young Afghan students, media workers, and artists who rejected the country’s conservatism. They ran Kabul’s Art Café and Restaurant, one of many social venues that was a haven for young people, especially women, forming their ideas of social autonomy.
There, balladeers could sing protest songs and women could smoke hookah next to men. But the café became a target of conservative Muslim clergy, who declared it a breeder of Western ideology. After a clergy-organised boycott and a police raid, Fazili and Hussaini were forced to close down.
The film begins in the aftermath of these events, when Fazili, Hussaini, and their children start their odyssey, first to Tajikistan and when that country rejects them back through Afghanistan and on to Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, and finally, Hungary.
The film shows their widely disparate life on the run, from freezing in the forests of Serbia, the frustration of dealing with bureaucracies and boredom of extended periods in refugee camps. But it also shows the love and moments of humour the family share.
Midnight Traveler screens at 7.30pm on Tuesday June 18 at Lennox Head Cultural Centre. Tickets are $25 through Humanitix.com.au, or at the door.