In This World

A film about the route from Pakistan to England. Jamal lives in a refugee camp near Peshawar. His family came from Afghanistan; the boy was born in the camp and works at a brick kiln. His family gathers the money to send him and his relative Enayatullah to London. The journey is arranged through smugglers. The route runs from Pakistan to Iran, then Turkey, then by sea to Italy and through France to England. At every stage there is another middleman, another vehicle and another price. The hardest section is a journey in a container. Hours pass inside a sealed lorry and the air runs down. The method is close to documentary. A small crew followed the real route with small cameras; the performers are not professionals and the characters carry their own names. In some scenes there was no permission to film. A narrator gives population and refugee figures between sections; the film places the story inside a statistic. Michael Winterbottom directed. It won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. An important production for anyone who likes stories of migration and documentary style. Before you watch, know this: the film offers no easy close and its last section is hard.