[antiwar-van] May 25: Film Screening of Seeking Refuge - DOXA and NOII partnership

[Harsha Walia]

From:    "No One is Illegal-Vancouver" <noii-van at resist.ca>

No One Is Illegal is excited to partner with the DOXA film festival this
year for the screening of Seeking Refuge...

The 2009 DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 22 to May 31 and
showcases documentaries that uplift through inspirational, often untold,
stories.

.......................................
Seeking Refuge (2008)
Monday May 25 at 6:00PM
Pacific Cinémathèque, 1131 Howe Street, corner Davie.
Filmmaker Karen Cho in attendance.
.......................................

TICKET INFORMATION:
Single tickets are $10, Festival membership (for all movies) $2
Can be purchased at select locations, online or door:
http://www.doxafestival.ca/festival/tickets.html


Every year, some 30,000 people come to Canada to apply for refugee status.
About 40-45% of those are eventually accepted. Seeking Refuge takes us
into the lives of five claimants and their support networks.

Though Esly and her common-law husband managed to evade violent gangs in
Honduras, they were stopped at the US-Canadian border. Since they could
not prove they had been living together for more than a year, he was
deported and eventually killed by the men who were threatening them in
Honduras.

Najia is a human rights activist from Kabul whose parents begged her to
flee after two of her colleagues were assassinated. When the death threats
spilled over to her father, she came to Canada.

Leyla escaped serial rape and other violence at the hands of soldiers in
the Democratic Republic of Congo but cannot produce the exact documents
demanded by refugee board members.

Fouad is a Palestinian from Lebanon who is running through his limited
legal options after his claim is rejected, due in part to bad luck as his
brother’s nearly identical claim had been accepted by a different board
member.

On the other end of the process is Kader, a blind man from Algeria who has
been living under asylum at his Montreal church for over three years.

Together their stories provide a provocative look into this lengthy,
frustratingly bureaucratic process, fraught with political landmines. For
the government it has become, to an extent, a numbers game. For the people
who come to Canada seeking refugee status, it is usually a matter of life
and death.

* More information about the film or the festival:
http://www.doxafestival.ca


Director’s Biography: Karen Cho is an emerging filmmaker who has carved
out a name for herself directing both documentary and fiction films.
Karen’s films often recount un-told histories and explore themes of
immigration, activism, self-identity and social justice. Her approach to
filmmaking is shaped by personal experience, pop-culture and her
background in a richly multi-ethnic family. Karen is interested in using
film as a tool for social debate. A graduate from Concordia University in
2001, she has already received several awards for her work.



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No One is Illegal-Vancouver is a grassroots anti-colonial
immigrant/refugee rights community collective with leadership from members
of migrant and/or racialized backgrounds. As a movement for
self-determination that challenges the ideology of immigration controls,
we are in full confrontation with Canadian border policies; denouncing and
taking action to combat racial profiling, detention and deportation, the
national security apparatus, law enforcement brutality, and exploitative
working conditions of migrants.

We struggle for the right for our communities to maintain their
livelihoods and resist war, occupation, and displacement; while supporting
indigenous sisters and brothers fighting theft of land and colonization.
We also place ourselves within the broader movement for global social
justice that struggles against capitalism, militarism, oppression,
poverty, imperialism, and other systems of domination and exploitation.



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