The Bridge

The Bridge explores the labor conditions of being an interpreter while also being a refugee under the governance of humanitarian aid. Shot in Kakuma Refugee Camp, the film is based on research conducted by an anthropologist and group of refugee interpreters, who became the filmmakers for this film. The fictional frame of the film enables a representation of the real without threat to refugee security. Centering on the everyday episodes in the lives of two refugee characters, who work as interpreters in a camp for a fictional humanitarian agency, The Bridge depicts the multilingual nature of the camp and focuses on issues specific to interpreters in the field (lack of trainings, rejection by other refugee clients due to their ethnicity, the experience of nightmares and other consequences of the trauma associated with interpreting difficult cases etc.). It also addresses topics that affect refugee workers more generally: the dual-status of being both "refugee" and "worker", the problems with the structure of work (incentive work) under which refugees are employed, and obstacles to organizing to produce change. Most poignantly, the film depicts a lack of respect for interpreting work and its hidden centrality to the operations of humanitarian organizations in refugee camps.

Producing The Bridge led three of the filmmakers to create their own 'Community Based Organization'(https://photofilm4change.org) that aims to produce more films based on research in order to advocate for social change.