“A story of blockbuster proportions! The Big Lie is an urgent and captivating story, told by a voice the world needs to hear.”  ★★★★ –  EDINBURGH49

“Shaniaz’s storytelling capabilities are intelligent, apt and truly cutting; a welcome break from the more trivial pieces of this year’s Fringe.” ★★★★ – THE LIST

“Shaniaz Hama Ali’s semi-autobiographical play contains all the elements needed for a great story…and like the rest of the fascinating hour that we spend in her company, we applaud her for it.” ★★★★ – BROADWAY BABY

Front Line Club are proud to present The Big Lie, a Edinburgh Fringe success production that is going off Broadway in New York later this year – via a pit stop at Frontline.

In this semi-autobiographical play, Shaniaz is an ambitious associate at Sweden’s leading corporate law firm and is assigned to work with their top client – a global arms manufacturer – to sell arms to Syria. The protagonist, an Iraqi-Kurd and a survivor of Saddam Hussein’s genocide of the Kurdish people, has to consider whether or not to take on the case. Her conscience tussles with her ambition to become one of the firm’s partners, enabling her to join the ruling class.

The Big Lie makes us question our own morality. In her shoes, would we take on this case?

This humorous, gripping play is written by Hama Ali and directed by Oscar Toeman. Shaniaz worked as an associate at a global corporate law firm in Sweden, where she gained first-hand insight into a world that is normally hidden. Shaniaz fictionalised her experiences at the firm in a film screenplay that caught the interest of a Swedish production company. When Shaniaz moved to London, she made it into a one-woman show to bring to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018.

The show won critical praise in Edinburgh with 4 stars reviews from Broadway Baby, the List and Edinburgh49. It was featured in the Scotsman, listed as one of four must-sees by the Daily Record and was nominated for Amnesty Freedom of Speech Award. 

Shaniaz says of The Big Lie, “As a Muslim refugee I wanted to make a play about the racism I experienced growing up in an all-white, working-class neighbourhood in Sweden and why people vote for the far right, for Brexit and Trump. But mostly, I want to tell the truth about the clients of the corporate law firm that I worked in – the wealthy 1% and their role in all of this.”

During the Q&A we’ll be asking tough questions about the meeting points of politics and theatre in our society – and the relationship between art and activism.

Shaniaz Hama Ali is a Kurdish-Iraqi actress who came as a refugee to Sweden at a very young age. She joined the Swedish Labour Party and became the fiscal spokesperson for the Labour youth. But Shaniaz had a passion for acting that never subsided, she resigned from her job as a legal consultant and moved to London to focus on her acting career. She has since then starred in the short film PRACTICE; performed in the critically acclaimed French TV-series The Bureau (Canal+); and most recently in Red Snake, directed by Caroline Fourest, award winning French journalist, in her feature debut.

Oscar Toeman read English at St, Catharine’s College, Cambridge University, and trained as assistant to Roger Michell, Polly Findlay, Blanche McIntyre, Tim Carroll and Lucy Bailey at institutions including Shakespeare’s Globe, the RSC and the National Theatre. He was Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre in 2011, long listed for the JMK Award in 2014 and 2015, a National Theatre Staff Director in 2015, Interim Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio in 2016.

Siana Bangura is a writer, producer and community organiser originally from South East London, now working between London and the West Midlands. Her work primarily focuses on the intersection between race, class and gender, exploring issues such as deaths in custody in the UK, police brutality, and gentrification. Siana is the founder and former editor of Black British Feminist platform, No Fly on the WALL and most recently she was Campaigns & Communications Officer for an environmental charity in Birmingham, focusing on mobilising young people to take action in their local communities. Siana’s past contributions as a producer in theatre include ‘Fierce’ (Camden People’s Theatre), ‘Othello’ (English Touring Theatre), and she is currently an artist in residence at The Birmingham Rep. Siana is an alumnus of China Plate Theatre’s The Optimists, Belgrade Theatre’s Critical Mass, and is currently commissioned to write three plays of her own.

In Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move Reece Jones presents a major new analysis of the refugee crisis, focusing on how borders are constructed and policed, examining state efforts to contain populations and control access to resources and opportunities.

We will be joined by a panel of experts to discuss the relationship between security projects, conflict along borders and the refugee crisis.

Chair:

May Bulman is a London-based journalist currently working for The Independent with a main focus on covering the situation in the Calais ‘jungle’ and the wider refugee crisis in Europe. She finished her Masters in journalism at City University in June and has since written on a freelance basis for several publications including The Times, The Mirror and The Independent. She is currently reporting on the imminent demolition of the camp in Calais and the fate of its residents. May believes accurate and effective reporting on the refugee crisis is a crucial job for journalists in Europe and around the world at the moment.

Speakers:

Reece Jones is a Professor of Geography at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, and the author of Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel.

Professor Heaven Crawley leads research on migration and human security at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University. She specialises in aspects of international migration, including policy, public attitudes and the experience of refugees and asylum-seekers.

Elinor Raikes is the Regional Representative for International Rescue Committee’s response to the European refugee crisis. Elinor rejoined the IRC into this role after working as an independent consultant for DFID and others in 2014-15. She was previously with the IRC for six years and during that time worked for many years in DR Congo as well as in Chad, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. Prior to the IRC, Elinor worked for Save the Children. IRC’s programming in Europe began in 2015 with a large-scale emergency response in Greece and in Serbia. Today, the IRC has a developed emergency response and is working to expand support to local actors to improve preparedness; and, is expanding its provision of technical assistance working with a large network of partners in order to respond to the unique protection needs of the context; is also developing technical assistance on policy and services to ensure the effective and positive integration of refugees and asylum-seekers.

Richard Savage is the Global Emergency Response Security Manager for Save the Children International. He has provided security analysis and oversight for SCI’s refugee relief efforts in Greece and for the newly established STC maritime rescue operation in the Mediterranean. Richard also has several years’ experience providing security management for INGO relief operations inside Syria and for the regional refugee response. He holds a Master’s degree in Security, Conflict and International Development. In addition to Richard’s extensive experience in the humanitarian sector, he comes with 20 years of security experience including service in the British Army, as well as the private security sector.

After the files were published, the Australian government defended their asylum processing policies, suggesting that the accounts in the 8,000 page report were comprised of false accusations of abuse and unverified sources. Immigration minister Peter Dutton has been quoted as saying “Nauru is not part of Australia, so this is an issue for the Nauruan government.”

Will the publication of the Nauru files lead to changes in the country’s asylum policies? We will be joined by a panel of journalists, migration experts and human rights defenders to discuss their initial reactions to the Nauru files, the implications of the reports and how a group of journalists broke a story from within a detention centre that has remained historically off-limits to the media.

Chair:

Emily Wilson has been with the Guardian since 2000, working across news and features. She was network editor of the UK edition of the Guardian’s website before moving to Sydney in April 2014. She is now editor of Guardian Australia.

Speakers:

Will Woodward is Guardian Australia’s deputy editor. He has been editor of G1 (the news section of the paper), deputy national editor, chief political correspondent and education editor, and was a Laurence Stern fellow at the Washington Post.

Anna Neistat is Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International. Over the last fifteen years she has worked in most of the world’s conflict zones and has recently returned from a visit to Nauru.

Ian Woolverton is Head of Media for Save the Children Australia. He works with the media to raise the profile of issues including humanitarian crises, the health of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders, youth justice and asylum seekers and refugees. He has deployed to many humanitarian emergencies, including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Eiri Ohtani is Project Director of the Detention Forum in the UK since 2009. She was also European Regional Coordinator of the International Detention Coalition between May 2015 and August 2016. She has over 15 years of experience working with asylum seekers and migrants, including directorship of a specialist legal advice agency.

For decades, newsrooms around the world have relied on local journalists, fixers and translators to help journalists carry out on-the-ground reporting from unfamiliar and dangerous regions. Without their support and local knowledge, international news gathering would not be able to function and some of the world’s most important stories would never have made the news.

But who looks out for the fixers when the international news teams go home? And what happens when local fixers become victims of a media crackdown against journalists?

An expert panel reveals how international news gathering really works, considers the risks in getting the story out and assesses the role of international news organisations in safeguarding the unsung heroes of foreign reporting.

Panelists:

Mowaffaq Safadi is a freelance fixer, translator and journalist who works across broadcast and print media. He writes regularly for Arabic and Syria-opposition websites and was a presenter for Syrian radio station Hawa Smart. He has worked for the Guardian, the Observer, BBC Radio 4 and international NGOs.

Issa Awadat is a freelance Syrian video journalist and photographer working on the current conflict in Syria from 2011-2015. He has been employed as a reporter and field producer for a number of western media outlets including the BBC, CBS and CBS 60 Minutes. As well as his work with the media, he has also produced short video documentaries and still images for a number of NGOs, covering the refugee crisis across the Turkish/Syrian border.
In 2015, after receiving numerous threats from ISIS, he left Turkey and gained asylum in the UK.

Jo Glanville is director of English PEN. She was an award-winning editor of Index on Censorship and was previously a BBC current affairs producer and documentary maker. She edited Qissat (Telegram), an anthology of short stories by Palestinian women writers. She has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the London Review of Books and the Observer, amongst other publications.
Kevin Sutcliffe, Head of News Programming, VICE Europe

Sarah Giaziri, Middle East North Africa Officer at Rory Peck

Evan Williams, Journalist and filmmaker specialising in international investigations

In 2014, 14,792 asylum seekers arrived in Denmark, 2,940 of them were children. At Home in the World follows the day-to-day lives of those children whose families are seeking asylum in the EU.

This remarkably intimate and touching documentary focuses on one Danish Red Cross school for refugees, where classrooms are filled with children from more than twelve countries. The students have had to learn Danish while adjusting to new surroundings and, in some cases, dealing with the traumas of conflict. While some students thrive and find friendship despite their difficult pasts, others act out with feelings of alienation and frustration. Some are denied asylum and sent back to their countries of origin, while others are granted residence and graduate to standard Danish language schools.

With stunning and unobtrusive camera work, director Andreas Koefoed masterfully captures the social and psychological impacts of displacement from the outlook of young people and the educators who are tasked with guiding them – and at times their parents – through daunting new experiences.

Directed by: Andreas Koefoed
Produced by: Sara Stockmann
Production company: Sonntag Pictures
Runtime: 58′
Country: Denmark
athomeintheworldthefilm.com

On Friday 19 June 2015, the Frontline Club held a screening of the genre-defying Those Who Feel the Fire Burning, an experimental film focusing on the experiences of those who risk their lives in order to reach the shores of Europe. The audience was joined by co-producer Katja Draaijer for a discussion following the screening.

Producer Katja Draaijer

On the film’s experimental narrative structure, Draaijer said: “It was always clear from the beginning that he [director Morgan Knibbe] wanted to tell the story from the perspective of a ghost. That’s why he used style elements from fiction films.”

“On the news we see all the numbers,” said Draaijer, “but he didn’t want to portray them [the refugees] as victims, but for we as an audience to experience what it is to be a refugee. That’s why he wanted to tell it from the perspective of a refugee himself.”

Asked by an audience member about the myriad languages spoken the film’s protagonists, Draaijer explained:
“Most of the time he [Knibbe] didn’t understand what was said. For the Arabic we had an Arabic translator… What he was really doing was intuitive, just really following them around. He didn’t care, really, about what they were saying. He just wanted to show the people what they do. How they cook, how they live. And that’s what he did. Sometimes he thought, ‘OK I have enough’ and turned the camera away. In the editing we found out that that really worked that way. It wasn’t so much about what they were telling us, [but] more about their experiences at the time.”

An audience member asked what personal impact the filmmaking process had on the director.

“When he started he was only 22,” replied Draaijer. “He wanted to help everyone by giving them money. So that was the first thing I said, ‘Don’t help these people by giving them money, you can help in another way.’

“I think after Lampedusa he was really emotional, for a long time… He wants the whole world to see it.”

For more information about the film and upcoming screenings, visit the Those Who Feel the Fire Burning Facebook page.

Conflict, economic crisis, and depleting environmental resources are driving increasing numbers of people to attempt the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. At least 1,500 migrants have died so far in 2015 on route to Europe – at least 30 times higher than last year’s equivalent figure.

Those Who Feel the Fire Burning, Morgan Knibbe‘s innovative and genre-blurring film, places viewers in the perspective of a person who has begun a dangerous and desperate journey to Europe. From its opening seconds, the film throws us into chaos as a boat carrying families of hopeful migrants plunges into rough waves during the night. While death is presumed for all aboard, one man continues his journey onto European shores as a ghost. Through his narration and observations of immigrants navigating new lives in Europe, we are faced with the reality that even those who survive the voyage arrive to a hostile world.

Skillfully shot and edited by Knibbe, Those Who Feel the Fire Burning includes swooping, dreamlike drone cinematography to capture the everyday lives of immigrants struggling in Greece and Italy. By employing unconventional documentary methods, Knibbe creates a humanistic and conscious-raising portrait of the individual lives at stake in the migration crisis.

Directed by Morgan Knibbe
Produced by BALDR Film
Duration: 71′
Year: 2014

Ill and weathered by decades of drug use, police cast Josué out of the deadly streets of Juárez into the desert, where they left him in a mental asylum governed by its own patients. Six years later, Josué manages the asylum. Now it is his job to give medicine to the sick; to help them walk; to assist them in recovering from the same trauma he experienced while living on the streets.

Attempting to reconcile his broken history, Josué dreams of his estranged daughter in California – who he last saw 22 years ago. He asks Aitken to look for his daughter, who posts pictures on the internet in the hope that she will reach out. Josué and his daughter make contact and agree to meet. The itinerant father knows he cannot explain his absence, but perhaps forgiveness can lead to a new beginning.

Ed Vulliamy is a writer for The Guardian and The Observer. In 2013, he won the award for literary reporting named after the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński for his book Amexica: War Along the Borderline, a vivid dissection of the violent US-Mexico ‘war on drugs’.

Directed by Mark Aitken
Duration: 72′
Year: 2015

Every year thousands of Africans leave their families behind in search of a better life in Europe. Ditte Haarløv Johnsen‘s intimate portrayal of everyday life after emigration explores the lives of three very different African immigrants, from three different places, who have embarked on a perilous journey to reach a common destination: Europe.

With rawness and dignity, Days of Hope presents personal experiences of migration and the obstacles faced by African immigrants in Europe.

Directed by Ditte Haarløv Johnsen
Duration: 75′
Year: 2013

A sobering and substantial piece of work by London-based photographer Abbie Trayler-Smith seems to have made an instant impression in the city this week.

An exhibition of her stark images of rejected asylum seekers still living in the UK has opened in the capital’s Host Gallery, winning both publicity and acclaim for the photographer. Among the highest-profile showcases, the BBC featured a selection of her images in an online gallery.

A high-quality video to accompany the show, featuring the still photographs and testimonies from the subjects, has also been released on Vimeo and elsewhere.

Still Human Still Here; Refused asylum seekers in the UK. from Anna Stevens on Vimeo.

As Kate Day writes in her photography blog for the Telegraph:

The exhibition exposes the hidden lives of those who are trapped in an impossible no-man’s-land, unable to return home but prevented from working to support themselves. They can only wait and hope their lengthy appeals are successful.

Abbie spent many months volunteering at a drop-in centre for asylum seekers before she started taking pictures. She explained that building a relationship with each individual she photographed was vital, not least because she did not want to "be a vulture" and exploit their vulnerability.

The trust she clearly developed with those she photographed has enabled her to shine a light on the drudgery of daily existence for these people. Cheap canned food heated directly on a gas stove in a squat in Leeds, the blackened feet of a figure lying on a shabby mattress, footprints in the snow in North London. Abbie’s pictures take us right to the heart of these immigrants’ lives and sensitively expose the hopelessness of their predicament.

The photographs are availalabe through Panos, which represents Trayler-Smith (a former Telegraph photographer of some repute), and are notable for their lighting and colours, with the overall look and feel of each frame complementing the often truly saddening tales they tell.

What also strikes me as interesting is the sheer depth and intensity of the project. As noted above, the photographer spent "many months" in research and, doubtless, many more actually shooting.

In today’s world of quick deadlines and shrinking opportunities, it’s heartening to see that those at the top of their game still find the backing to work on projects like this.

Dominick Tyler, a close friend of Trayler-Smith’s who blogs at photojournalism.co.uk (good address!) has asked her to blog about her experiences working on the project and putting on the show. It should be an interesting read.

Photograph: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Panos