Easy Lessons: a fascinating Hungarian documentary movie about seeking refuge
Currently, it is definitely not easy to live as a migrant or refugee in Hungary. This is exactly what the new Hungarian documentary Easy Lessons tries to capture, featuring a Somalian refugee teenager, as Hvg.hu reports.
Global migration and refugee crisis have become hot topics in Hungary recently. Since the start of the refugee crisis, the protection of refugees under Hungarian law has decreased bit by bit. In August 2016, the government abolished a bill that provided the general rules concerning the financing of refugee programs and integration of refugees.
According to Viktor Orbán PM, Europe should assist refugees, but one cannot give help to the world while ruining its own nation. Other governmental figures such as Péter Szijjártó FM consistently claim that Brussels is making efforts to settle refugees under a plan. NGOs supporting refugees in their human rights have to face the consequences of their work due to a recent governmental bill.
Easy Lessons was produced in this political atmosphere. The new Hungarian documentary film exhibits the life of a Somalian refugee teenager, Kafia.
Kafia, 17, the main character of the documentary fled to Hungary two years ago to escape her forced child marriage in her home country, Somalia. By now, she has become familiar with the state children’s home in Budapest, where she had been living since her arrival. She studies in the Hungarian educational system, too: she goes to high school, learns Hungarian and prepares for Hungarian examinations and high school graduation.
The documentary gives an insight on what it is like to leave your country as a refugee and survive not only physically, but also mentally and spiritually.
Although she seems to meet the challenges of her situation perfectly, she is exploited to constant self-doubt and hesitancy. As she leaves her home country, she leaves everything she was accustomed to; her family’s religion, her mother and even her old self.
Accordingly, the film is formed into a confession to her mother: what would she think of her, should she get to know about her daughter’s new life in Hungary?
Beyond her personal situation and the fable-like features of the movie, another important perspective comes into the picture: an inconvenient inoperable social system. The social system that is supposed to help refugee children in finding their new ways of life proves to be unsuccessful in doing so and represents a hurdle that refugees, especially children have to overcome, as seen in the movie.
However, there would be other ways of managing migration, as the head of the United Nations’ Refugee Agency (UNHCR) also emphasised during a press conference here, in Hungary.
The protection of refugees is not incompatible with guaranteeing security.
Featured image: www.facebook.com/easylessonsfilm/
Source: Hvg.hu