“I’ve been making films for over 20 years, and this film has been the hardest by far,” Eva Orner tells FilmInk. “It’s because it’s the most personal. It’s my country…the hardest thing is what we’ve become and what we’ve allowed to happen to our country. I cannot believe what we’re doing, and it has to stop. I left Australia for the US in 2004, and the Tampa controversy was still very much imprinted on my brain. At the time, I was pretty horrified by it and shocked by it, but I never thought that we would still be dealing with offshore detention now. Under Tony Abbott, as things got progressively harsher and harsher, I was angry and disappointed in my country and frustrated. I’m very much aware that I was lucky to have a beautiful and privileged childhood in a democratic country. Towards the end of 2013, I felt like I had to act. I had to do something. Very quickly, I knew that I had to go home and make the film.”
Chasing Asylum 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. Taut and confronting, the doco explores the mental, physical, and financial consequences of Australia’s decision to lock away families in isolation, hidden from media scrutiny, and derailing their lives under the false banner of protection.
Throughout the production, Orner travelled widely to film the first-hand accounts that made up so much of the film. “I went to Afghanistan, Iran, and Lebanon to meet with people who had been detained on Manus and Nauru,” the filmmaker explains. “I wanted to go to Indonesia because I wanted to show what our policies result in, which is people being stranded in Indonesia because they can’t come to Australia by boat. I’ve spent 18 months on this film – you spend a lot of time getting to know people, and getting to trust them to a point where they’re willing to share their stories with you. Cambodia was more of a fact finding mission to see what kind of place it was in terms of how it was set up to host refugees, and of course, we all know the answer to that is that it’s not.”
Focusing her documentary on the asylum seekers’ stories and policies themselves, Orner did not feature herself so heavily in the film, as many documentary filmmakers might typically have done. “That’s just my style,” the director says. “It’s not about me, but when I do press, people always ask about me and what I learnt from it. At the end of the day, it’s not about me. It’s about the subject of the film, and what we’re doing and the victims of that. I don’t see the point of putting myself in the film. I’ve worked with Alex Gibney [Orner was a producer on the director’s Oscar winning doco, Taxi To The Dark Side], who narrates most of his films, and that works fantastically for him. His voice is very strong and very clear. I’ve noticed with documentaries that male directors – if you look at the likes of Mike Moore and Morgan Spurlock – tend to put themselves in their documentaries or narrate them. And all of the amazing female documentary filmmakers, from Barbara Koppel to Amy Berg to Lucy Walker, are invisible. Their films are all very artistic and subtle and focused on the character and the story. They’re not in the film – I noticed it a while ago, and I thought that it was an interesting observation. In general, men tend to put themselves in their documentaries more than women.”
As much a documentary as a call to arms, Chasing Asylum pulls back the curtain on one of this country’s most difficult and divisive issues. “I just want to invite Australians to come and see the film,” says Eva Orner. “There’s a lot of good journalism done on the camp and on the conditions there, but unless you see something for yourself, it’s easy to not think that it’s real. The film has a lot of unprecedented footage of what our taxpayer dollars are paying for and what it’s like in the camps, and it puts all this together in a clear way. I just say to Australians, come and see the film, think about the issue, be informed, and then make up your mind about what you think.”
Chasing Asylum will screen as part of FilmInk Presents at The Ritz Cinema, Randwick, Sydney on Sunday, May 22 at 6:00pm. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director, Eva Orner. To buy tickets, head to The Ritz. Chasing Asylum will also be screened across Australia as part of a six-week promotional tour. For more details, head to the film’s Facebook page.
