By Travis Johnson
After only four days in limited release around Australia, the controversial documentary Chasing Asylum has accrued a box office take of some $144,236. Givn it’s only on 11 screens, plus TUGG on demand screenings, that’s a truly impressive number.
As a result, Academy award winning director, Eva Ormer, is scheduling more Q&A sessions in order to engage with the widest possible audience, adding appearances at Sun Theatre, Yarraville, and Cinema Nova Carlton on June 11 and 12.
Hitting screens when public debate about the refugee crisis is at its peak, Chasing Asylum is an unprecedented ground-level look at the actual nuts and bolts of Australia’s brutal immigration policy and the effect it has on inmates on Manus Island and Naru. Featuring extensive, never before seen, secretly filmed footage from inside the detention centres, gripping and heart-wrenching testimonials from whistleblowers and stories from asylum seekers and refugees who have tried to make Australia home, the film takes apart Australia’s recent hard line refugee and asylum seeker policies.
Kristian Connelly, General Manager Cinema Nova, said of the film: “Audiences are responding to Eva Orner’s Chasing Asylum with an engagement and frustration rarely seen for a feature documentary. Interest in the film has been extraordinary, through audience engagement and a clear hope that it will lead to a more humane treatment of refugees. Following four sold-out Q&A screenings with director Eva Orner we fully expect Chasing Asylum to be another break-out documentary at the Australian box office”.
