FORGED premieres online Sunday 5 December 17.00 UK at the Global Health Film Festival 2021
Since the beginning of the Civil War in 2011, many displaced Syrians have been forced to flee their homes with just the clothes on their backs. In the height of war, not a moment could be spared to pack the vital items that they would need to start a new life outside of Syria and they left behind the passports and identity cards that prove their existence. Now, they live stranded, both in Syria and abroad.
As many of 80% of migrants are today reported as living anonymously, with no documentation to prove their identities.
This feature documentary follows the story of a man aiming to change that; an illegal forger working undercover in Turkey to create passports and certificates for this lost population of Syrians.
By obscuring his identity, our forger narrates the story and walks the audience through his mission to provide Syrians with their rightful identities without the Regime. Documents bought from the Syrian government can cost thousands of dollars or worse, force the applicants into jail. Our forger’s work thus involves carefully replicating the passports, family books, marriage, death and birth certificates of the Regime.
At the same time, we follow four Syrian families in their plight to live with no identity in their host countries. Saleh and Marwa, a young married couple, are stuck in the crossfire as they cannot prove they are husband and wife. Quona, a grandmother, worries about dying with no proof that she exists. Stranded in Lebanon, mother of six Haifa cannot afford to have her most recent child registered with the state. Ali is a teacher whose children were born after the war, forbidding them from any formal education.
Forged is a documentary about war and its aftermath, love, hope and the humanity that binds them together.
Filmed in four countries by two directors, Ali Alibrahim and Lauren Anders Brown, this story is a personal one. They met during at the BBC Arabic Film Festival in 2018. Ali grew up in the countryside of Idlib, northern Syria near Aleppo and made his first documentary One Day in Aleppo showing a city unrecognisable to him with buildings that were once his friends’ homes and grocery stores he frequented torn down and reduced to shells.
Lauren grew up around the city of dreams in New York City never dreaming she would ever need a reason to leave a place that had it all. Both Ali and Lauren chose to migrate to different countries and go through the painful process of proving their identities in foreign lands where having a national insurance number, a utility bill in their names, or a marriage certificate is a privilege most take for granted.
Yet the people who have survived the civil war in Syria, endured unheard of tragedies and personal losses, are not truly alive without these forms of identity. The contributors in this film come together to tell a universal story of war, loss, love and hope. It is a unique story of what happens when those affected by the conflict in Syria back in 2010 have now grown up. They’ve left their country behind and are looking towards the future. What hardships will they face now?
These questions and others about identity, human rights, mental health and the filmmaking process behind FORGED will be shared in a panel discussion after the film’s premiere moderated by Tom Scott-Smith of the University of Oxford’s Programme on Forced Migration.
Tickets are available for the premiere through the Global Health Film website where you can join the directors, the producer Megan O’Hara and impact campaign manager Suha Kalaji on the virtual red carpet a half hour before the screening begins.
Watch the trailer and get your tickets today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwnX_uoDvLc
Follow FORGED on social media: instagram, twitter, and facebook and sign up for the impact campaign updates for FORGED. For any press or distribution related enquiries, email production@collaborateideasimages.com.
