How do you make a home when you’ve lost your home? What future can you have when your past has been stripped away? To address these questions, the directors of Another Summer: Afghan and Ukrainian Stories of Exile selected Afghan and Ukrainian university students to participate in a filmmaking programme that would focus on the plight of refugees in Europe from their two countries. The Afghan students had fled Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021. The Ukrainian students were studying in various European countries when the Russians invaded their nation in February 2022. These students were joined by a group of American college students.
Thanks to the generous support of the Graduate Institute, team leaders were able to provide a week of training in basic filmmaking techniques. At that time, the student filmmakers were also divided into teams and sent to seven cities in Europe and Turkey to record the stories of people who had fled violence and repression. What they brought back demonstrates something different than the usual cameraman/subject relationship at the heart of most documentary filmmaking. The candor and intimacy one finds in the stories documented in Another Summer reflects the relationship of people who have all suffered similar hardship sharing and confiding their stories and feelings with one another. And you see and hear as well the respect of young adults listening to elders who are both new and familiar to them and who they intuitively understand and honor in ways appropriate to their respective cultures. Throughout, one senses the bonds of people who recognize in each other both what they have lost and the humanity they share and refuse to give up.
