Another News Story takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis. The film opens in 2015 Greece as refugees arrive on the idyllic island of Lesbos and follows refugees into Hungary and Croatia and across Europe to a hoped-for sanctuary. Since 2015 the current refugee crisis has flooded every news and media outlet across the globe. Another News Story takes a unique approach to capturing this narrative. While still giving a groundfloor perspective of migrants fleeing Syria and Turkey and their struggle to find a country where they are welcome, director Orban Wallace simultaneously turns the camera on the journalists and the role they play in representing the crisis to the world. Wallace’s gripping debut feature raises important questions about what happens behind the camera, and how the life cycle of a news story starts and grows.

Another News Story has had 17 international film festival selections including Karlovy Vary, IDFA, Zurich and Glasgow among others. The UK theatrical release for the film is at the end of April.

Run Time: 84 mins

Trailer: http://www.anothernewsstory.com/

Ethical Journalism Network

The Ethical Journalism Network is an alliance of reporters, editors and publishers aiming to strengthen journalism around the world, working to build trust in news media through training, education and research.

The EJN has developed migration-reporting guidelines, which are available as an infographic and as a video have been used for training around Europe and have been presented to the United Nations in New York and other international forums.

The migration and media studies that the EJN has published or contributed to are:

How do media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on migration – A 17-country study commissioned by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development to produce a study analysing how media cover migration in Europe, Middle East and North Africa.
Fatal Journeys – Improving Data on Missing Migrants – Published by the IOM in 2017.
Refugees Images: Ethics in the Picture – From the EJN’s 2017 Ethics in the News report.
Moving Stories – An international review of how media cover migration published by the EJN in 2015.
To find out how to support the EJN visit: http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/support

See the report online here.

Chair – Hannah Storm

Hannah Storm is Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), a UK registered charity whose members include some of the world’s leading news organisations. INSI’s work focuses on physical, psychological, and digital safety and it provides a network for members to share information to ensure journalists stay out of harm’s way. Storm is author of The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from High Risk Conflict Zones (with Robert G. Picard) and No Woman’s Land: On the Frontlines with Female Reporters. Before joining INSI, she worked for organisations including the BBC, Reuters, ITN, and Oxfam.

Speakers

Dr Anthony Feinstein

Dr Feinstein is professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and director of the Neuropsychiatry Programme at Sunnybrook Health Science Centre. He has undertaken numerous studies looking at how journalists are affected psychologically by their work in zones of war, conflict, and disaster. He is the author of Journalists Under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Shooting War.

Will Vassilopoulos

Will Vassilopoulos is a freelance Video Journalist primarily working for Agence France-Presse (AFP). He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology & sports sciences and a master’s degree in exercise physiology from Manchester Metropolitan University. He started his journalism career in text for Japanese news agency Kyodo News before becoming a news anchor for the English-language bulletin at Greece’s state broadcaster ERT. In 2011 he went behind the camera and has since covered topics such as Greece’s economic crisis, political unrest in Egypt, Turkey and Romania, the conflict in Ukraine and most recently the migration crisis in Europe. He is the recipient of the 2016 Rory Peck Award for News for his film “Fear and Desperation: Refugees and Migrants Pour into Greece”. ​

Photo Credits: Yannis Behrakis

When people think of diaspora populations, their first thought tends to be of refugee populations, the migrant crisis, and communities fleeing conflict as a result of what’s reported in the media. However, this is only part of the story. Often these scattered populations across the globe continue to have an enormous impact on their homelands.

The European Research Council has sponsored 5 years of extensive research and close to 500 first-hand interviews among Kosovo, Albanian, Armenian, Bosnian, Kurdish, Iraqi and Palestinian diasporas, and a large-scale survey. These displaced, real, diverse people, living in European countries from the UK, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and France give us a unique insight into the homelands from which they originate.

This resourceful, entrepreneurial section of the population are important actors in the conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction processes of their homelands, be that Iraq, Palestine, Bosnia or Armenia.
Conflict-generated diasporas can have a huge influence on war and peace, and it is often something that is under reported in the media.

Dr. Maria Koinova, Principal Investigator for the ERC Project implemented at Warwick University, and her team will present their paper “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty”, and be joined by journalists to discuss the wider importance of their work and how it can influence public policy today.

For more information on the project, visit their website here.

Chair

Chris Morris – BBC Correspondent

Morris regularly contributes to BBC News, Today and From Our Own Correspondent, and is the author of the 2005 Granta publication The New Turkey. He was BBC Turkey Correspondent from 1997-2001 based first in Ankara and later opening the BBC’s new bureau in Istanbul covering the 1999 İzmit earthquake and the arrest and trial of the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. From 2001-2005 Morris was the BBC Europe Correspondent based in Brussels covering the European Union, the proposed European constitution, and other European stories.

Speakers

Dr Maria Koinova – Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty”

Before joining Warwick University in 2012, Dr. Maria Koinova held research fellowships and visiting scholar positions at Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., the European University Institute, and Uppsala University, among other academic institutions. Koinova is the author of Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States. Since 2006 Koinova has worked on topics related to diasporas, conflicts, post-conflict reconstruction and democratization, and has conducted multi-sited fieldwork among the Albanian, Armenian, Bosnian, Croatian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Serbian, and Ukrainian diasporas in the US and/or in Europe.

Tony Barber – Financial Times Europe News Editor

Tony is a columnist and specialist writer on European political, economic and business news and currently the Europe editor for the Financial Times. From 1990 – 1997 he was the East Europe Editor and Europe Editor at the Independent. Before that, he worked as a Reuters Foreign Correspondent from a range of cities from New York, Vienna, Moscow, Warsaw to Belgrade.

Dr Ben Margulies –  post-doctoral Research Fellow, University of Warwick 

Ben’s research background is primarily in comparative and European politics. He is also interested in the way that nations and party systems respond to migration and globalisation. His Ph.D. “Liberal Parties and Party Systems” used data taken from European party manifestos to track when parties moved left or right, and showed how these movements affected vote shares that liberal parties received. Ben joined this project to help develop a large-scale survey among conflict-generated diasporas in Europe.

Dr Dženta Karabegović – Ph.D. University of Warwick

Dženeta’s Ph.D. research project analyses diaspora influence on a weak state in post-conflict environments. Her work has looked into Bosnian diaspora mobilisation in Europe around issues of transitional justice, genocide remembrance, and political participation. This research was undertaken in the form of interviews, participant observation and process tracing with multi-sited fieldwork. Dženeta holds an MA. from the University of Chicago and was a visiting scholar from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.

Dr Oula Kadhum – Ph.D. University of Warwick

Oula Kadhum’s research investigates in a comparative perspective diaspora mobilisation for state-building following the 2003 intervention in Iraq. Her work explores how the diaspora in the UK and Sweden mobilised towards this end and why there were differences in their approaches to building the state. Oula completed her Masters degree at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, a postgraduate certificate in Education at Kings College London, and a Bachelors degree from Queen Mary University of London.

Featured image: protestors demonstrating against Turkish President Erdogan’s visit to Strasbourg. France Oct 4th, 2015

To mark World Day against Trafficking in Persons, we will be hosting a screening night in collaboration with the Ethical Journalism Network to present –Sea of Pictures.

Over the last three years improving the quality of migration reporting has been a priority for the Ethical Journalism Network, conducting two major studies on migration coverage, creating practical tools for journalists.

Sea of Pictures is a documentary that supports this work. The film focuses on the image of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, who was found drowned on a beach in Turkey while trying to reach Europe with his family. This image went viral and became a symbol of the refugee crisis and the widespread international apathy up until that point. His image was seen on newspapers across the globe. But how as a media outlet do you choose which pictures to show to the public? What are the ethics surrounding taking pictures such as these? Can you really control how these pictures are interpreted and repurposed?

The screening will be followed by a debate around these questions. The panelists will discuss how pictures can impact and reshape public discourse and policy, but often in ways that were entirely unintended.

The EJN has released a special edition of Ethics in the News  in which the makers of Sea of Pictures,  Misja Pekel and Maud van de Reijt write a Report on the Ethics of Photographing Refugees.

Last year the EJN was commissioned by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) to write a report on how media on both sides of the Mediterranean cover migration. The report, which was published to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3, covers 17 countries and provides recommendation for media and policy makers.

Chair

Dorothy Byrne is Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel Four in the United Kingdom. She was appointed in September 2003, having previously edited the award-winning Dispatches. During her tenure, the Channel’s news and current affairs programmes have won numerous BAFTA, RTS, Emmy Awards and others. In 2014, Dispatches won the RTS Journalism Awards for both best Home and best International Current Affairs, the first time one strand won both awards, and Channel Four News won the RTS Journalism Award for Best News Programme of the Year for the second year running.

Speakers

Anastasia Taylor-Lind is an English/Swedish photojournalist who has been working on issues relating to women, population and war for over a decade. She is a Harvard Nieman Fellow 2016, and recently finished a year of research at the university on war, and how we tell stories about modern conflict. During the program she studied narrative non-fiction writing. Anastasia is also a TED fellow. She has written about her experiences as a photojournalist for The New York Times, TIME LightBox, Nieman Reports and National Geographic. As a photographic storyteller, her focus has been on long-form narrative reportage for monthly magazines. She is a National Geographic Magazine contributor, and other clients include Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, TIME, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian.

Misja Pekel is a film maker and producer of the film Sea of Pictures. Misja studied Law and Journalism in Amsterdam and Leeds. He is a documentary filmmaker at the Dutch public broadcasterHuman. Besides documentaries, he is working on Medialogica, a tv series about public opinion and the influence of media

Find out how to donate to the EJN here: https://ethicaljournalismnetwork.charitycheckout.co.uk/

Check out Moving Stories, a report on how to cover the migration crisis here: http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/resources/publications/moving-stories

Heated discussion on the issue of Europe’s crisis in handling the arrival of refugees took place at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 4 May.

From the disproportionate focus placed on the Mediterranean crossing, to the misconception that migration is negative by default and the idea that lobbying Turkey to allow Syrians to work is the answer, the panel dispelled the myths surrounding the crisis.

Patrick Kingsley, author of The New Odyssey and the Guardian‘s inaugural migration correspondent, began by speaking about his extensive reporting of the crisis. The central stories in his book range from that of a smuggler, to a civil servant, to a pregnant refugee woman. Kingsley writes of how he travelled across the Macedonian border with the pregnant woman, who believes the child she is carrying has died.

Heaven Crawley, a leading researcher of migration, said that Kingsley depicted the movement of people more completely than many correspondents before him. Media coverage often focuses only on the crossing to Greece, and yet, “the European focus on the journey across the Mediterranean is such a small part of it,” said Crawley.

Kingsley’s reporting navigates the different routes to Europe and explores the various driving factors of migration. This is important in a Europe where, Crawley said, “policy is about 15 years behind the dynamics of the movement.”

Hassan Akkad, a teacher and freelance photographer who fled the Assad regime in 2012, illustrated European ignorance on a personal level. When people hear the word refugee they expect to see a Syrian in rags, he said. “I’ve had people questioning me about why I had a cell phone.” And yet, many who have fled the war are middle class with much to contribute; Akkad is fluent in English and has studied Shakespeare.

Akkad went on to detail how he came to be in the UK. His crime, for which he suffered broken bones and solitary confinement, was protesting peacefully against Assad: “Protesting in Syria is like a suicide mission. You say goodbye to your family because you never know where you are going to end up,” he said.

L-R: Patrick Kingsley, Heaven Crawley, Lindsey Hilsum, Hassan Akkad, John Dalhuisen. Photo by Tolly Robinson

On the journey, the Syrians that Akkad travelled with were from all walks of life – and their first encounter with Europe was not a happy one. Greek marine forces launched an attack on their boat: “I felt like Syria was on a dinghy. And we were not welcome,” said Akkad. He told the audience that for now he has put his career as a teacher and photographer on hold in order to tell the story of the Syrian people, jokingly dubbing himself “the professional refugee.”

The chair, Channel 4’s international editor Lindsey Hilsum, turned the discussion towards possible solutions. In order to explain how circumstances had become so grave, John Dalhuisen of Amnesty International said that many European governments were enacting hostile asylum policies and closing their borders to prevent the far right from sweeping to power.

Dalhuisen said that this had intensified the crisis, which is almost unprecedented. “We’re looking at quite a distinct phenomenon,” he asserted.

Kingsley disagreed regarding the relative scale of the problem. “It’s actually quite small numbers,” he said. He argued that Europe, as the world’s wealthiest continent, has more than the capacity and resources to deal with the numbers arriving on its shores.

According to Kingsley, the surge in migration is a result of the poor management of legitimate passage to the UK. People were able to wait a few years in interim countries such as Turkey before being granted visas to Europe, but they could not wait the half-decade that they were forced to. “Resettlement provides a reason for people to stay put,” he said. After so long, with no legal means to achieve more prosperous and safe lives for themselves and their families, “inevitably, people decided to vote with their feet,” Kingsley added.

Crawley agreed: “The problem is at our end, we haven’t adjusted,” she said. She dismissed the arbitrary way in which European governments treat all the countries from which people are migrating as if they are the same. “What we need in policy terms is nuance,” she said. And the whole conversation around the issue needs to shift: “The idea of the end point being to stop people is nonsense,” she said.

An audience member asked about the responsibility of the wealthy neighbouring Gulf states. Akkad responded that despite presenting itself as the “mother of Islam”, Saudi Arabia had offered fleeing Syrians no support. Kingsley added: “We shouldn’t judge our response by the yardstick of the Gulf states… it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing more as well.”

One journalist in the audience asked how it is possible to maintain public interest on such an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Following the surge in media attention in 2015, attention has drifted away. In the beginning, he said, Kingsley’s aim was to humanise the crisis. Now that so many journalists have told the personal and tragic tales of individual refugees, a degree of compassion fatigue has taken over. Kingsley said he had to keep taking different approaches. “In terms of keeping people engaged,” he admitted, “it’s a real struggle.”

Photos by Tolly Robinson

Words by Harriet Agerholm

On Wednesday 18 November, Gulwali Passarlay enlightened a packed audience at the Frontline Club into his journey as an unaccompanied child refugee from Afghanistan to the United Kingdom. Joined by former Afghanistan correspondent for the BBC David Loyn, and Nadene Ghouri who co-authored his book The Lightless Sky, Passarlay was keen to address the complexities of the refugee crisis from both a personal and political perspective.

“My mother sent me away- she saved me but she lost me too”- @GulwaliP who left Afghanistan aged 12, running for his life (@frontlineclub)

— Maeve McClenaghan (@MaeveMCC) November 17, 2015

Loyn began the discussion by offering context on the current refugee crisis. “There are many Gulwalis in the world. Almost 60 million people are displaced, between 10 and 15 million people a year move from their homes and Afghanistan is the second largest country people flee from – 800,000 people are internally displaced.”

Passarlay began his journey when his mother paid smugglers to help him escape from Afghanistan after his father and grandfather were shot by US soldiers. “For a mother to decide to send her 12 and 13 year-old children away is extraordinary. I am sure she did not understand the implications and the dangers that I would face along the way. Neither did I,” said Passarlay. “Throughout my journey, my biggest issue and fear was uncertainty.”

Loyn asked Passarlay: “Why do you think your mother trusted your life with smugglers? And what was in it for the smugglers to keep you alive?”

“Smugglers need to maintain their reputation. The system of smuggling is more effective and efficient than the government! She was faced with a difficult circumstance, and through family friends she found a smuggler that was her only hope in giving her sons a better life,” answered Passarlay.

During the harrowing journey Passarlay was separated from his brother, which he referred to as a significantly traumatic experience. “My mother said to not let go of each other, but in Peshawar we were so quickly separated. For the rest of my journey, I had three things to do: I wanted to look for my brother, I needed to get across and I desperately missed home.”

Even arriving in Italy after a life-threatening boat trip from Greece, Passarlay was determined to get to England and find his sibling. “I am forever grateful to the people of Italy who genuinely wanted to keep me safe and welcomed and wanted to help me. But I had to find my brother.”

Responding to Loyn‘s question on why many refugees and migrants have their sights set on the United Kingdom as their final destination, Passarlay said: “I would have loved to have settled in Italy, but the language barrier was far too difficult. Whenever I talk to people from the right-wing, I tell them it’s a great thing for people to want to come to seek refuge in their country. Why? England embodies ideals of hope and opportunity; English is an international language and holds a historical and cultural connection to many countries thanks to the British Empire. But some also believe that Britain was involved in the conflict that exists in their country, such as Afghanistan, so migrants feel Britain has a moral responsibility to take them in.”

Passarlay concluded that he eventually managed to reach England and survive his journey thanks to fellow refugees, who have become his “brothers.”

“As the youngest, I needed help more than anyone. I tried not to show my innocent side, so I acted tough and put on a brave face – but this was not the case. The thousands of people I met were all literally in the same boat as me. We needed each other’s companionship and partnership.”

Loyn then directed the discussion towards Passarlay‘s difficult journey into Greece by boat, when his vessel almost didn’t make it. “Hearing that 2,000 migrants sunk earlier this year kept me awake at night. I feel their pain. I know exactly what they are going through. We were stuck [in the overcrowded boat] for 49 hours.”

Speaking on her experience of writing The Lightless Sky with Passarlay, Ghouri said: “It was a privilege to work with him. The story of unaccompanied refugee children is one I have always wanted to tell, and Gulwali is amazing for deciding to give a voice to many others who have been in his situation.”

@frontlineclub thank you for giving us the opportunity to have this evening' event for #TheLightlessSky it was great pic.twitter.com/8iJKOtqKSZ

— Gulwali Passarlay (@GulwaliP) November 18, 2015

In response to a question from Loyn on his advice for the Home Office, Passarlay commented: “What we are doing right now is not enough.”

An audience member from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England commended Passarlay for his courage in reporting his story, and said that his book should be used by the Home Office as a guide into how to better process unaccompanied child refugees. The audience member said: “I believe that things have gotten worse since you made your journey Gulwali. My organisation has churned numbers and figures to notice that since December 2014 to March 2015, over half of unaccompanied minors have their age disputed… Local authorities need to rise to the challenge.”

Ghouri agreed that the response to the refugee crisis by both the government and the media had been far from acceptable. “The British press do not report the full picture on the migrant crisis, so people in this country do not understand what is happening. There are only 3,000 people in Calais, but the press makes it feel like there are much more.”

More information about The Lightless Sky is available here.

Gulwali Passarlay was only 12 years old when he left his home and family in Afghanistan. He would be shot at, imprisoned and almost drown before he reached his new home in Britain.

Fleeing the violence and reprisals of the Afghan war, Passarlay was smuggled into Iran, separated from his brother in Pakistan, and forced to spend 50 hours on a dangerously overcrowded boat on the Mediterranean. Braving oppressive heat and the freezing cold, his 12 month odyssey took him across an entire continent.

We welcome Gulwali Passarlay to the Frontline Club in conversation with journalist and former Afghanistan correspondent for the BBC, David Loyn, to share his story as documented in his memoir The Lightless Sky, and to offer his personal insight into the current refugee crisis. As an accomplished ambassador and advisor, Passerlay holds the unique position of both witness to and spokesperson for the plight of refugees in Britain.

Gulwali Passarlay is an Afghan political refugee currently reading politics and international relations at the University of Manchester. He has appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 News and TEDx.

He will be joined by co-author of The Lightless Sky and journalist, Nadene Ghouri.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

L-R: Sean McAllister, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Amer Daoud

The plight of Syrians has returned to the headlines following the recent release of a tragic image of young Aylan Kurdi lying dead in the sand. It is easy to forget that the current situation in Syria, and the millions of refugees who have been forced to flee the country, has its roots in the Syrian Revolution of 2011 and the brutal response of the Assad regime.

In his latest film, A Syrian Love Story, Sean McAllister follows the story of one family torn apart by the political imprisonment of a mother, as they experience the civil war and finally find refuge in Paris.

On Wednesday 23 September, McAllister, alongside the film’s protagonist Amer Daoud and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, joined an audience at the Frontline Club for a Q&A following the screening.

Throughout the film, McAllister‘s close relationship to Daoud, his wife Raghda and their children is evident. “[McAllister became] part of the story in a way, which is quite a dangerous thing for a journalist,” said Alibhai-Brown. “We’re all trained: you must be distant, you just be objective, you must be balanced. All rubbish really.”

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

McAllister, who has shot many films in the Middle East, told the Frontline Club that he felt guilty for only visiting countries when they were at war. “I’ve made films in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and after… I always remember them talking about the golden days, before war,” he said. When he heard someone say that Damascus in Syria was like Iraq in the golden days he thought he’d go and see for himself.

Before the Arab Spring uprising and the subsequent civil war, McAllister travelled to Syria to find a story. “I kind of fell in love with this place… there was fun with fear in those days and I was hanging out there for maybe, on and off in this insane way that we do making documentaries, about eight months,” he said.

In the film, McAllister says he met Daoud in a bar in Damascus, a serendipitous encounter that Alibhai-Brown seemed initially reluctant to believe.

“Yeah, I saw this man, he asked everybody in the street: ‘What do you think about freedom? Is Syria free? And what do you think about this president Bashar al-Assad, why is his picture everywhere?’” Daoud said of McAllister. “He’s crazy to ask these questions.”

Daoud told the Frontline Club audience that he was worried at first when McAllister began to ask him these dangerous questions. “That’s why it took five years to make [the film],” said McAllister. “It took me two years to get [Daoud’s] trust and then his wife came out of prison and she didn’t trust me for another two years.”

Although the film focuses very centrally on Daoud and Raghda’s relationship, McAllister said that this was not the focus from the outset. In fact, McAllister’s initial failure to secure a commission for the film had a significant impact on its direction.

“It wasn’t that I was planning it, it wasn’t a master plan, I just couldn’t get it commissioned,” he said. “If it had been commissioned earlier it would have been an Arab Spring film that would have been largely around the topical events of the time.”

When Daoud and his family left Syria, McAllister said he was initially worried that the film would lose momentum. “But actually,” he said, “what started to happen between them for me as a filmmaker was much more interesting in France. And it was this fragmentation… this disillusionment and disconnection to this whole place.”

McAllister also said that once Daoud had moved to France, he became a lot more involved in their relationship. “My role became even more connected. They would call one week, [Daoud] would call me up and say: ‘You’ve got to come now, tomorrow, we don’t know what the fuck’s going on. You’re the only person that’s been with us on all of this, you can make sense. And the next week [Raghda] would be calling me up saying, ‘Sean, come now’.

“Because although these people that have gone through so much talk to so many interesting people that want to help, they’re looking in the eyes of people that really don’t know what they’ve been through. And I think that’s the disassociation, the disconnection we have with this tragedy in Europe now.”

Amer Daoud

Daoud explained why many refugees were so desperate to come to Europe. His experience of being a refugee in Lebanon, he told the Frontline Club, was one of purgatory. “You cannot imagine how you live without papers, without food, without anybody to take care of you. What are you? Nothing. You are waiting for just one thing: death. All the refugees are the same. They have a hope to come to Europe,” he said.

L-R: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Sean McAllister and Amer Daoud

A Syrian Love Story has started to gain more traction than McAllister is used to. He admitted that despite his best efforts, most of his work finds a niche audience. “My target audience is three mates back in Hull that don’t give a monkeys about wherever I go… and try to get them into that space” he said. “Usually that doesn’t matter and it still goes out to 265 people on BBC Four.” However, on this occasion current events have pushed the film out to more people.

“You deliver a good film and there’s unfortunately a dead body of a boy swept up on a beach,” said McAllister referring to the photo of Alyan Kurdi published earlier this month. Due to the urgency these photos have given to the refugee story, A Syrian Love Story will be broadcast in a prime BBC One slot.

“It’s not easy for eight million Syrian refugees, it’s not easy. But I think we can find a way to press our governments somehow, in Europe, to organise travel between Europe and the places of refugees,” said Daoud.

However, as McAllister said, it is much harder to support refugees in their emotional upheaval. “We went to some of the camps in Bulgaria and places on the border and it was just horrendous. I mean it was so bad that the refugees there, having been beaten up by the Bulgarian police, were trying to get back to Syria,” said McAllister.

He did not blame Bulgaria, but said there needed to be a more concerted effort.

“What we don’t really realise is how many people live like [Daoud],” said McAllister. “I think he moved houses about 16 times in the making of this film and there were times I knew he didn’t have anything, that they’d not eaten for days. And that’s not unusual for a lot of people in his situation.”

A member of the Frontline audience asked Daoud how, after leaving everything behind in Syria, he supports himself and his family. “How do I support myself?” he said, “I train my face to smile everyday.”

Sean McAllister (left) and Amer Daoud

Visit the A Syrian Love Story website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.