by John Noonan
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sami, Simon, Hasiballah, Phillip Dwyer
Intro:
… a brutally sad and compassionate film …
Clocking in at not much longer than your average episode of a sitcom, what stands out the most in Dennis Harvey’s The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp is how much hope and anger the director manages to pack in. Harvey lays out his cards quickly in the opening scrawl, advising how the Irish Government denied accommodation for 1400 newly arrived immigrants between January and June of 2023.
Ostensibly, the documentary is about some of these immigrants who have now found themselves homeless on the streets of Dublin. We follow Sami, Simon and Hasiballah, who are hoping that life will give them a leg up. Simon is the optimist of the trio. Referring to everyone else as ‘brothers from another mother’, Simon is keen to show Harvey the world that they’ve built for themselves in an alleyway behind graffitied boards and sheets. It’s evident that the group take pride in the meagre things that they own and are seen keeping everything clean and tidy.
Despite the show of camaraderie and hopefulness, the threat of isolation and violence quickly looms over them. Before Harvey arrived, for example, one his subjects was chased down the street by a man with a knife who tried to break into their camp. Things come to a head when Phillip Dwyer, a ‘concerned citizen’ turns up to film people on the streets in a supposed bid to highlight the injustice that is happening to the homegrown Irish. A self-described journalist, Dwyer has been accused in the Irish press of kicking dogs and equating homosexuality with paedophilia, acts so cartoonishly vile, he would be laughable if it weren’t for his talents. Dwyer knows how to use an iPhone and stir a big pot of anger.
Confronting Sami outside the camp, Dwyer watches on as a group of like-minded men circle the immigrant, leaving him to react by taking a swipe at the group with a pole. With the video spread far and wide by Dwyer on the internet to his racist and anti-immigrant compadres, a protest against the camp soon rises. Harvey spends time with his subjects, warning them of the danger ahead and encouraging them to make good choices.
Given the film’s title, it’s not a spoiler to say where the third act heads, and you’ll be hard pushed not to gawp at the hate-filled violence on display. Harvey doesn’t narrate the protests; he doesn’t need to. The actions of many are so nakedly aggressive, it would be hard to imagine how anyone could justify them. Admittedly, there’s a bigger conversation to be had here about how some people prey on the fears of those who have lost trust in their government and seek out retribution. With policies being a nebulous creation, these people need something tactile – like a refugee camp – to take their impotent rage out on. Similar scenes have erupted in England and Australia. How one goes about fixing that is not part of this film and perhaps that’s for the best.
The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp is a brutally sad and compassionate film that drops you into the world of two groups of people you may be unlikely to hang out with under normal circumstances.