THE WINDING ROAD HOME Kaye Harrison on Displacement, Detention and Sanctuary
Sanctuary (2019) was the result of an accidental meeting. ‘While I was making another documentary […] an asylum-seeker advocate told me the story of Khaled,’ says writer/director Kaye Harrison.
At the time, he was living in immigration detention on Christmas Island. I started talking to him and became so interested in his life story that I wanted to make a film about it.
He’d worked as an interpreter for the [War in Iraq] coalition forces […] He was part of the war against terror. Yet he was in detention, considered a potential threat to our safety.
After spending eight months in the Christmas Island Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, Khaled, despite being registered as a refugee with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was handcuffed and, in the company of two security guards, deported to Iraq, where he was born. However, having agreed to Harrison’s proposed film, he carried with him a tablet, which enabled him to record what followed.
That was in 2015. Over the following four years, Khaled and Harrison stayed in contact as the former, afraid for his life in Iraq, embarked on yet another quest for asylum by travelling over land
