A Safer Place
Edward Lawrenson - Two Films
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18m
Dir. Edward Lawrenson - 18min - 2021 - UK - Languages: English, Burmese - Subtitles: English
As tourists gather on a beach in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, a scientist explains the devastation that the rains will bring over the summer months. Just a few miles away is Kutupalong refugee camp, the world’s biggest refugee settlement: it is home to more than a million Rohingya who fled their homes in Myanmar in 2017, feeling violent persecution. As the scientist warns of the risk of landslides in the camps, a group of Rohingya women reflect on how they are prepared for this imminent disaster.
"The forced displacement of more than a million Rohingya from their homeland in Myanmar in 2017 was a huge humanitarian crisis. The refugees are safe from violent persecution but now face the ruinous impact of extreme weather events (on the increase in the region because of climate change). As if their flight from state repression wasn’t catastrophic enough, they await in their fragile shelters the near certainty of cyclones and storms in the coming rainy seasons. Having suffered so much to reach the camps, how do the Rohingya view these new imminent dangers? I visited the camp in 2020 to ask some residents this question – and their responses form a story of confinement, the limits of science, and human resilience." Edward Lawrenson