Stolen
Stolen
New Zealand Premiere
Australia 2009 / 78min. / Spanish, Hassaniya with English subtitles.
Directors Violeta Ayala, Daniel Fallshaw. Producers Deborah Dickson, Tom Zubrycki.
Filmmakers Ayala and Fallshaw follow Fetim Sellami, a Saharawi refugee, to North Africa for a reunion with her mother. Mother and child were separated when Sellami was a toddler. But the UN-sponsored reunion reveals a secret which spirals the film into a dark world the filmmakers could never have imagined. The Saharawis start talking about a forbidden subject… their enslavement.
The filmmakers recount moments of terror when their lives were in danger as well as the extreme hardships in getting the footage across borders. Perhaps most disturbingly, it becomes difficult to distinguish who are the good guys, as the ‘good guys’ turn bad and the ‘bad guys’ appear to do good.
Protestors have demonstrated against the accuracy of the film. The movement running the camp flew Sellami to the Sydney Film Festival to deny being a slave and the allegation of widespread slavery in the camps.
Regardless of who you believe, Stolen is a compelling, modern-day, real-life cloak-anddagger thriller.
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The Documentary New Zealand TrustThe Documentary New Zealand Trust
Is a non-for-profit charitable organization that advocates and promotes the importance of documentary films and filmmaking in New Zealand to our creative, business and wider communities. The Trust organizes the Documentary Edge Festival and Documentary Edge Forum and Pitching Forum.
Documentary Edge Festival is Australasia's only international competitive documentary film festival held annually in New Zealand and showcases the very best documentary film from New Zealand and around the World. The festival runs from late February and includes an Awards Night, Q&A sessions with filmmakers, social functions and more.
Documentary Edge Forum is a 3-day industry event runs at the same time of Documentary Edge Festival. It includes master-classes, seminars and panels. A key event of the Forum is a Pitching Forum attended by overseas commissioners, buyers and sales agents where selected projects are pitched with an opportunity to earn a commission or co-production funding. Documentary Edge also examine the innovations and challenges facing the documentary filmmaking industry so as to better equip our filmmakers. The Forum is place to learn and network with local and international professionals from the industry.
The Trust is also developing the establishment of Documentary Edge Campus, a Resouce Centre for documentaries in Auckland.
In the Gallery
Submitted19 Jan 2009InWhats On and Reviews
