Chasing Asylum Australia's Treatment of Refugees
This film exposes the real impact of Australia's offshore detention policies and explores how 'The Lucky Country' became a country where leaders choose detention over compassion and governments deprive the desperate of their basic human rights.
The film features never before seen footage from inside Australia's offshore detention camps, revealing the personal impact of sending those in search of a safe home to languish in limbo.
CHASING ASYLYUM explores the mental, physical and fiscal consequences of Australia's decision to lock away families in unsanitary conditions hidden from media scrutiny, destroying their lives under the pretext of saving them.
Running Time
97 mins
Year
2016
Kanopy ID
1295285
Filmmakers
Languages
Subjects
Show More
Related videos
Hope - Survivial and the Search for a Better Life in Australia
Four hundred asylum seekers were pitched into the sea when their people-smuggling boat from Indonesia sank on its way to Australia in 2001. Three hundred and fifty three people drowned. Only seven survivors made it to Australia. Amal Basry was one of those survivors, spending 22 hours in the ocean…
Blue Collar and Buddha - Laotian Refugees in America
This dramatic documentary explores America's most recent refugees, struggling against the mounting tension of a post-Vietnam era filled with guilt and anger. A group of Laotian refugees have built a Buddhist temple on a small farmstead on the outskirts of a resolutely blue-collar town. Their efforts to preserve their culture…
Don't Fence Me In: Major Mary and The Karen Refugees from Burma
Since 1962, Burma has been ruled by a military junta. Life has deteriorated markedly for its citizens. Despite its former prosperity and its rich resources, it was voted least developed nation by the UN in 1987, and human rights atrocities continue to prevail. Forced from their homes by the government,…
Refugees
YOU CAN'T ASK THAT asks refugees the awkward, inappropriate or uncomfortable questions you've always wanted to know the answers to, but never had the guts to ask.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
When she was 9, Zainab's parents made the heartbreaking decision to leave their home in northern Afghanistan. They set out on a journey across the globe, putting the fate of their family in the hands of strangers.
Across borders, behind bars and onto a smuggler's boat - the family chased…
19 Days - Refugees Settle in Canada
This short documentary follows several refugee families during their first 19 days in Canada, as they navigate an unfamiliar terrain that has suddenly become their home. During the 19-day timeline established by the federal government, an initial assessment is done and refugees are assisted with everything from airport reception and…
The Invisibles - The Human Face of the Immigration Crisis
Europe is in the grip of an immigration crisis: people from Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere are arriving in ever greater numbers as they flee war, oppression, and a lack of opportunity. Germany receives more asylum seekers than any other European country.
The Invisibles presents the human face of…
Mary Meets Mohammad - The Friendship of an Australian Woman and Tasmanian Asylum Seeker
The film opens with the Australian government's surprise announcement to build Tasmania's first detention centre for 400 male asylum seekers at Pontville on the outskirts of Hobart. The local community erupts with hostility as the Department of Immigration host a public meeting.
When a suggestion is made at the local…
Border Politics - Examining the Treatment of Refugees Across the Globe
This documentary follows human rights barrister Julian Burnside as he traverses the globe examining the harsh treatment of refugees by most Western democracies.
This contemporary story is about the threat to human rights, the loss of democratic values and our increasingly heartless treatment of 'the other'. Seventy years after the…
Between Fences - Israel's African Refugees and the Theater of the Oppressed
Holot (Hebrew for "Sands") is a detention center in the middle of the Israeli desert that was built to quickly address an influx of African asylum seekers, mostly refugees from Eritrea and Sudan. The migrants in Holot have no legal status in Israel, and the government seems to have no…
Freedom Stories
Freedom Stories is an exploration by filmmaker Steve Thomas of the achievements and struggles of former 'boat people'. Now Australian citizens, they arrived seeking asylum from the Middle-East around 2001 - a watershed year in Australian politics sparked by the Tampa affair and Prime Minister John Howard's declaration: "We will…
Dinka Diaries - Sudanese Refugees Settle in Philadelphia
The story of some of America's most recent arrivals: Sudanese refugees who would have never dreamt a few years ago that they'd be living in America. Over the course of ten months, the film follows the lives of three Sudanese refugees who resettle in the Philadelphia area and adjust to…
Comments (1)
This documentary gives a very conflicting feel to asylum seekers. On one hand we are lead to believe that they are tortured prisioners who are seeking a place to save their lives, then it cuts to two men that have died while in detention centres. It goes to their parents and discusses this. ...Read more
This documentary gives a very conflicting feel to asylum seekers. On one hand we are lead to believe that they are tortured prisioners who are seeking a place to save their lives, then it cuts to two men that have died while in detention centres. It goes to their parents and discusses this. I have to say they did not seem to be 'running' from any persecution. Horrible that they died, yes, but I also think that people who just want to leave their country to go to another need to go about it the 'right' way.
Read less