A story which began with a $200 donation and a two-room refugee school in Indonesia will arrive at Federal Hall this month, accompanied by two of the people who helped bring it to life.
Federal Loves Refugees is hosting a screening of the new documentary We Are Not Powerless on Friday, September 18, followed by a Q&A with director Jolyon Hoff and Nagina Zahra, one of the film’s central characters.
The film follows refugees stranded in Indonesia after Australia ‘stopped the boats’, and the remarkable education movement which grew from that first tiny school. Today, the network supports more than 1,300 refugee students and 130 refugee teachers, with former students going on to universities and careers around the world.
Nagina and her husband Muzafar Ali helped establish the original school after fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nagina was resettled in Australia in 2015, completed an education degree and now trains teachers working in Cisarua.
For Hoff, the Federal screening also carries a distinctly local flavour.
‘Coming to Federal to screen our film feels like a homecoming of sorts for me,’ he said.
Hoff spent much of his childhood in the Northern Rivers, where his grandparents Bill and Jean Ringland retired to Newrybar.
He remembers surfing locally, reading The Echo ‘from front to back’ and discussing politics on their verandah.
His grandparents were no strangers to local activism either, with Bill involved in environmental campaigns including opposition to Club Med and the Skennars Head sewage outfall, while Jean was active in local writing and poetry circles.
Hoff said the film aims to ‘humanise an intensely complicated global geo-political story’ by bringing refugee voices directly into the cinema.
We Are Not Powerless runs for 94 minutes and is in English and Hazaragi with subtitles.
The Federal screening takes place on Friday, September 18 at Federal Hall.
Tickets are $20 and can be booked online through the We Are Not Powerless website.
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