While the need to address the
refugee crisis is at an all-time high, unfortunately so is the level of
anti-refugee rhetoric and misinformation about refugees. Yet, they are
ordinary people like you and me, who have lost everything. They’ve left
their entire lives behind, often with just the clothes on their backs. They come
here to start over. They want to make sure their kids can go to school. They
want to work and they want to contribute to our communities. Just like us, they
seek a life of dignity, freedom and security.
Margot
Robbie – The law student
Margot gives her voice to a
young student who cannot lose hope because one day she’ll be a lawyer.
She remembers her first year
at college. She was 17. But then the college was bombed. She recalls her house,
her teachers, her friends. She misses her best friend the most, she doesn’t
know where she is now. More than the absence of comfort it is the lack of
education that is the hardest for her. She would have liked to continue her
studies, to present cases in court, to defend people in need of her help. She
loves the law. She has lived in a refugee camp for four years, but she still
hopes she’ll be a lawyer one day.
John
Cho – The teacher
John gives his voice to a
teacher who tells what it means to teach when there is nothing left.
There is no school in the
camp. His young students have no books, no pens, no paper. So he improvises,
uses simple tools, writes letters in the dirt instead of on a blackboard. Some
children have been here in the camp for so long that they have never gone to a
real school. When he spots a particularly bright student, the most difficult
thing is to find a proper school so the child can continue to study. Sometimes,
he manages to do it. He doesn’t lose hope. “One day, we’ll go back,” he says.
Gael
Garcia Bernal – The poet
Gael gives his voice to a poet
who lives in the memory of a lost love.
It’s been four years now but
he remembers everything as if it had happened the day before. He was a student,
but also a poet. Encouraged by a teacher, he began to write more, arousing the
interest of a girl he was in love with. Although he read her his poetry he
never revealed his feelings. He comes from a poor family, whereas hers is a
very well-to-do background, he was convinced that they had no future together.
Then one day he found the courage to tell her that all his poems were for her.
