From Chasing Asylum to Sherpa, a new class of rabble-rousing, boredom-detonating Australian documentaries is buzzing with a sense of urgency
Irrespective of your personal opinions on the subject, if you watch Oscar-winning film-maker Eva Orner’s detention centre exposé, Chasing Asylum, you will leave feeling shaken. There are stories of self-harming asylum seekers living in government-supplied squalor and children answering to numbers instead of names.
Released shortly after an Iranian refugee died after setting himself on fire and Papua New Guinea’s supreme court ruled that the detention centre on Manus Island was illegal – also during the heat of an Australian federal election campaign – the film is timely, to say the least.
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