The Journey

To reach the home of the first character in our film, 3-year-old Amina, we travelled for over 15 hours, but may as well have travelled back in time 1000 years. Amina is from the Afari tribe, who live in small igloo-shaped huts – covered in reed matting and animal skin, in the Ethiopian drylands. They grind their grain between two stones by hand, and cook in a stone oven in the ground. There is no school for the children and the nearest hospital is 150km away, hence unreachable if you don’t have a method of transport. And, yet, they manage to survive much as they have done for centuries, with their own culture and customs largely in tact due to the isolation. But, right now, their survival is being threatened, just as it was during the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s, as the last 3 years have seen the worst drought in 30 years. Amina became severely malnourished until a mobile health clinic run by a local NGO turned up to help address malnutrition and offer vaccines to children in the community.

Our Journey through childhood in 3 of the toughest environments on earth began with Amina and we wanted audiences to feel like they were physically being taken on Amina’s daily journey, walking shoeless through this inhospitable, sweltering moonscape, with her mother and baby brother, to reach water. We used slow movement in the piece to feel like we were following along after her, being led by her. I also decided that I wanted to match the camera’s height to that of the children who were telling their stories – so that audiences weren’t going to be adults looking down on the children but rather were seeing the world from their perspective or the perspective of a friend.

While the experience is a physical journey, it is also a journey through time and place, as our three main characters are different ages, living in 3 distinct places, and with varied histories and futures. So, we used animation to illustrate the children’s memories, their hopes and dreams, but also to transition from one child’s story to the next as 3-year-old Amina grew into 10-year-old Changkouth from South Sudan – a shy, smiley, bookworm – who was doing really well in school despite having missed several years due to the conflict. And then, as Changkouth’s story ended and we were introduced to 19-year-old Mani from Chad. Mani’s was an incredible story to end on as – despite losing both her parents to HIV and suffering stigmatisation for being HIV positive herself – Mani refused to be put in a box. Instead, she is fighting to bring a change in attitudes towards HIV in her community, talking to anyone who will listen and reaching out on social media to young people all over Chad and even overseas.

Read more from the director about this project in the following blog posts.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/picture-this-productions/south-sudan-the-journey-begins/1358935644228140/
https://www.facebook.com/notes/picture-this-productions/ethiopia-the-journey-continues/1469191069869263/