Chasing Asylum

The documentary takes up Australia’s policy towards people seeking asylum. The film uses footage shot in secret inside the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. People who worked in those centres come in front of the camera and describe what they saw. What the asylum seekers themselves say is inside the film as well. The film takes up the events on Manus in February 2014 and the killing of a man there. The death that same year of another man who was not given treatment is also inside the account. The work calls the practice cruel and inhumane; that characterisation is the film’s own case. The account takes the human, political and financial consequences of the policy together. Eva Orner’s ninety six minute Australian documentary was completed in 2016.