The Refugee

The Refugee will be a feature length documentary focusing on the refugee experience. We will focus on the stories of a handful of actual refugees that have come to live in Saint Louis. We wish to allow them to tell their story as a first hand account, in their own words. We will explore what it is like to live in a interm camp, and to go through the "vetting" process. We will explore the fears, hopes, and struggles that go along with being a refugee and with being and outsider in a foreign country.

The film will be produced in the style of the video essay entitled 'F for Fake', by Orsen Wells. We will not only follow the lives of two or three actual refugees living in Saint Louis, but we will also interview government officials, social workers, volunteers, and the average person "on the street", to understand the various points of view. We will bend these stories and points of view into a full length video essay that seeks to inform and stimulate conversation.

We will do this in order to explore the themes of xenophobia, Islamophobia, immigration, and how cultures interact with one another and grow as they mingle. We ultimately hope to help open a much needed conversation about these subjects and effect positive change by doing so. Once we have completed production of the film we hope to release into in to film festivals so that a wider audience can see it. If we fail to capture an audience at the festivals we will release the film online.

This is very large project, and we hope to bring the highest production value possible to it. We hope to allow the participates adequate time to tell their stories and to produce the best film we can, with the recesses we are able to leverage with your help. To that end. ...

Any help you may be able to offer to this project would be greatly appreciated. Even a single dollar or if all you do is share the campaign on your FaceBook or tell one or two people, that would be amazing. We strongly believe this is a conversation that needs to happen. Not just here in the United States, but in Europe as well. Here is a small breakdown of our plan and what we need the money for.

April-Agust: Preparing and Conducting Interviews. Producing Narrative Content. Production of dedicated website. Establishment of an account with Vimeo and IMBD. We as well hope to be able to travel to Europe and visit the camp sites and facility there so that we can give a first hand account of the situation before they reach the states.

August-November: Editing, Color Correction, Sound Mix, Graphics, Titles and Output.

Dependent: Distribution via Film Festivals or VIMEO PRO.

Here are some of the facilities here in saint louis for refugees. We hope to dialogue with these groups and groups like them.

The International Institute of St. Louis: http://www.iistl.org

Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma: http://www.stlcenterforsurvivors.org

Immigrant & Women's Program http://www.irwp.net

Quick Fact About St. Louis and refugees:

Saint Louis is home to over 70,000 Bosnians (who began coming here as refugees in the early 90's during the Bosnian war). This is the largest concentration of Bosnians outside of Bosnia.

Saint Louis is also home to refugees from: Eritrea, Vietnam, Iraq, and the Congo (this is the fastest growing group).