In Far from Home, the main subject, Samira, keeps iterating wanting to get out of India for a better future for her sons. Unfortunately, for the Afghans in India, this may be a pipe dream.
Over the past year, Far from Home has been selected for eight film festivals. Most people who watched the film had little or no idea about the Afghan community in Delhi. Many didn’t even know that they existed. Some people took offence to my criticism of the Narendra Modi government’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which makes it impossible for Afghan refugees to assimilate. And practically no one had an idea about the processes of the UNHCR to deprioritise Afghans who came to India by plane versus Afghans who escaped by foot to Pakistan or Iran. At a screening in San Francisco, an Afghan refugee pleaded to the audience during the Q&A to not forget Afghanistan just because it now has a stable government. But it seems like the world has moved on to more important things. There is an active war raging in two continents, which gets more media coverage than Afghanistan. It breaks my heart because the less we talk about Afghanistan, the more we doom the Afghans to their fate.
Read more here: https://www.outlookindia.com/international/far-from-home-shedding-light-on-the-unseen-lives-of-afghan-refugees-in-india
