Beyond Fear

Beyond Fear

In a remarkable feature debut, Journey Beyond Fear is Robyn Hughan’s first fully realised movie about fourteen year old Zahra and her family’s plight as they are left stranded in Malaysia interning to seek UN Resettlement (Asylum).

Zahra together with her two sisters are the daughters of Afghan refugees who sought shelter in Iran. After twelve years of living in fear of deportation with no hope of getting any stable and secure employment, the family makes a decision to escape to Malaysia where they live in what could be termed a slum. Very often, to shoulder the hefty rent, several families would share one apartment, and so the Kumars have always been on the fringe. At only fourteen, Zahra has to quit school to join the workforce.

She works because her father and mother are both illiterate in English or Malay. She works round the clock more than fourteen hours a day for the family’s subsistence. Her overworked employer verbally abuses Zahra and threatens to report her whenever she demands the three months salaries she rightfully earned but was not paid. This has also taken its toll on her health which has resulted in hair loss due to the stress.

Zahra and her family are lost in uncertainty. It’s a stark contrast to how determined she was to turn down a people smuggler offering a “good boat” and an easy way to get to Australia. However, despite their friends’ feeling of hopelessness which leads to dire consequences, Zahra, who had quit her job, sinks deeper and deeper into depression as she is unable to return to school.

All the families in their building who are in a similar situation as theirs appear to have their resettlement cases approved but, as the years go by and they are constantly told ‘we’ll be in touch’, Zahra loses all hope and attempts to leap off the top of the building owned by them.

Through struggles and adversities, the family continues to smile, brings hope to each other and consoles each other. Finally, after 7 years of dreaming, the family manages to settle in Australia.

If there is one thing that should be clear, is that this is above all a story of human weakness, and above all, human strength. Despite their troubles, Zahra and her family are able to manage to find something to smile about and be thankful for. The narrative of the refugee has mostly been authored by people whose aim is to portray these people as robbers and swindlers who are jumping the queue, wringing out the benefits or moving to this nation to leech on taxpayers.

This film shows us how love, determination and sacrifice are three of the most underutilized traits in humanity, and that most importantly refugees are humans first. Human beings who seek to improve their condition, assist other individuals, and wander freely knowing that they are not wanted criminals.

Journey Beyond Fear is a vital movie. Settlements are ever possible for only 1% of registered refugees under the UN. Such is the life of the waiting list that it is horrible and there are incessant dehumanizing factors and they must be told.

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