Filmmaker Statement

I’m a first generation Australian, living on stolen land. My father’s family arrived in Melbourne after a six-week boat journey from the Netherlands in the 1950s, fleeing the economic crisis that followed WWII. During the war, soldiers tried to stop my grandmother and her best friend when they were collecting food for their families. Knowing the danger they were in, they turned and ran. Shots were fired and only my grandmother survived. Like my grandmother, Ayaan is a woman who’s forced by powers beyond her control to risk everything, to give at least one of her children the possibility of a future. Ayaan’s journey and sacrifice highlight the fact that in 2022, it is the descendants of Australia’s colonizers who are deciding who will be allowed entry into Australia and who will be refused.