A conversation with: Els van Driel.

Els van Driel made an impressive documentary that records the terrible journey of young refugees.

Els made a documentary about the journey of young refugees to Europe

Motopp likes to talk to people who are involved in the theme of migration and social entrepreneurship in an inspiring way. This time: journalist Els van Driel.

Together with Eefje Blankevoort, journalist Els van Driel made an impressive documentary that records the terrible journey of young refugees to Europe. The children are exposed to all kinds of dangers – including abuse by border guards – and their asylum procedures are treated with suspicion. In search of a way to really make an impact, the makers did not stop at just a documentary. In addition to the photo exhibition and a game, petitions, a manifesto and a road trip along the institutions of power in Europe followed.

You have chosen not to just make a documentary, but to take more action to map out the problems and hopefully bring about policy change. How did that come about?

That is a bit in our DNA as makers, Eefje and I know each other from our student days at the Kriterion film theatre. We were friends then and discovered that we are committed, although we did not know then that we would become journalists.

In 2014 I was asked for a project about our asylum policy, I asked Eefje to join and that was our first project together. The Asylum Search Machine was an interactive cross-media project, in which we went in search of how our asylum policy works. We noticed that it is so absurd what happens in the asylum chain and it is strange that citizens do not know exactly how that works. We felt that we had to make that visual and clear. After that we also had conversations with citizens, council members, policy makers and ultimately ministers throughout the country. This led to the next project, called the Deal: a documentary about the EU-Turkey deal. For that, we filmed on Lesbos right after the deal, to see what went wrong there, for example in camp Moria. When we came across an unaccompanied refugee child there – who got completely stuck in the procedures – the idea for Shadowgame came about.

That’s how we got involved in this theme. If you work on this theme, you have to be very committed. It was a no go for us to just make it without following up on it. If you see that international treaties are being violated on a large scale, you have to try to address that. We also thought it was important to tell those stories together with the young people, so not from our Western perspective.

Did you think of the form that the project took in advance?

It grew that way, that wasn’t planned in advance. However, we usually work transmedia. We use different forms to tell a story. Of course, we didn’t know that some of the boys we followed would arrive in the Netherlands. You keep in touch with them and follow the developments. When we started, we immediately mobilized our network of NGOs, activists and governmental organizations such as COA and IND. We said to them: “this is what we are going to do, what would you like to do with it?” That way, those parties felt involved in the project at an early stage and so you know that you can make more impact. You notice the impact in different ways. For example, during the many screenings of the film. Some people who turn 180 degrees in their opinion about refugees. The school screenings are also gold. Some young people have been raised with the idea that refugees are rapists and profiteers. After seeing the film, they said: “I am going to talk to my parents about this because I have now seen that that is not the case at all.”

We will soon have a hearing in Brussels at a committee where the boys will tell their story. We are taking legal action. We are still making follow-up documentaries, so we will continue to work on this theme.

What was the reaction of organisations such as the IND to the screening of the film?

We also received moved and dismayed reactions from the IND employees. There was a senior employee who said that at the beginning of the film his first attitude was: ‘’Is this boy telling the truth? Is he who he says he is? After 10 minutes I took off my glasses because I was so moved. These were just young people looking for safety and a better life. And who can blame them.’’

He now realised what kind of professional deformation he actually has. The film brought him back to his motivation for doing this work: to help people who are on the run. Other IND employees also shared that feeling. But, you also hear them say during the breaks: “We are running into walls, the policy is hard and inflexible and then you can’t do much.” Some also said that they are going to stop because they cannot identify the work with their ideals. So I think that the film makes the asylum policy very human. It is no longer about numbers but about children who have been given a face.

So the policy comes from higher up, where should the change take place?

Yes, that is a very complex story. You can try to achieve change at different levels. For example, at the level of support, the general public, that people feel and see that they are people like them. But for policy change you have to go to politics and you have to be at the European level. In the end we went to the European Parliament and organised a screening there with the children from the documentary. That was of course super special to be there in the heart of the European Parliament. The place where policy originated that actually took away their rights. So that was quite intense and emotional for them. At the same time, it was also instructive that they noticed; yes, but in Europe you can raise that issue, that’s how democracy apparently works. I can raise my voice against injustice.

Yet it is frustrating to notice how slowly it goes. We thought, ‘we are now in the European Parliament, we can’t get any higher, this is where the change has to come from.’ And you notice that most parliamentarians in the room agree with you there. But that is the complexity of Europe: many member states simply go their own way. It really is step by step and that is very frustrating, it goes very slowly if you want to change something.

It is difficult to be very hopeful, if you also see the daily news around Ter Apel: children who are left to their fate among adults. We have our own Moria. What we are now seeing in Ter Apel is what we saw in all its intensity in the Balkans and in Greece over the past 4 years. The Netherlands is also going its own way in taking away the rights of people on the run.

While we can apparently arrange things for refugees closer to home. I read that the children in the film also had a hard time with how Ukrainian refugees were treated.

Shortly after the flow of Ukrainian refugees started, a resolution was passed in the European Parliament stating: we are going to give refugee children from Ukraine all the rights. They must be able to go to school, have access to medical care, be safely accommodated and the borders will be opened for them. That is proper according to all international treaties. It is fine that we are doing this. And then it is of course extremely bitter and painful for the children in Shadowgame to see that your peers are given that right and you as a Syrian or Afghan are not. That you almost died to even cross the European borders. That you were tortured by border guards. And that after arrival you have to go through a very tough procedure in which you are distrusted. That is what we are trying to address in our manifesto ‘bescherm kinderen op de vlucht’: give all refugee children the same rights.

How can we best create change?

I strongly believe in showing humanity. There are many talented, wonderful people among all those refugees. It’s fantastic that a company like Motopp also focuses on that: by using opportunities for refugees and companies, by seeing talents. I think that we as journalists should continue to make stories about injustice, people who are being squeezed by the system, standing up for the voiceless. And we should do that together with them. The narrative of ‘they are pitiful oppressed people that we have to help’ is passé. We have to empower people and let them tell us about their talents and experiences, about what their lives have been like, we can learn a lot from that.

That is exactly what we try to do at Motopp. So that talented people don’t waste away in asylum centers, for example.

Exactly. There is a poignant example of two brothers from our documentaries. One is 18, the other 16. While one goes to school, receives guidance and lives with other young people under supervision, the other is wasting away in an asylum seekers’ centre. Due to boredom and the lack of perspective, he is also haunted by traumas. The older person has been placed in a small municipality in Drenthe, where he is the only Syrian, the only foreigner. And there is also no work for him there. Travelling by public transport is very expensive, so he can’t go anywhere. You can just think about those kinds of small things; place such a boy in the city. We want to expose that kind of nonsense in the system. The human dimension is hard to find.

For more information, see www.shadowgame.eu