The feature documentary, BEHROUZ will have its world premiere in Christchurch on Saturday, 11 June, at the Isaac Theatre Royal. Come and join us for this special event! Tickets are available now.
The film tells the story of award-winning Kurdish journalist and writer Behrouz Boochani. He fled the Iranian regime, seeking asylum in Australia in 2013, only to be exiled to the offshore immigration detention centre on the remote Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
Behrouz narrates the story of his detention, and the struggle for freedom. The film follows him as he navigates life in detention, leads the resistance to indefinite detention and finally his life in Christchurch as a free man, after seven years of detention by the Australian and PNG governments on Manus Island.
His book No Friend but the Mountains written while in detention on his mobile phone has become one of the most celebrated books in Australia in recent times, winning the prestigious national literary award, the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature.Behrouz came to Christchurch at the invitation of WORD Christchurch in 2019. He was later granted asylum and became a familiar figure in the city spending the first couple of years of his freedom here.
“I see this film as a story about how we exposed a brutal system through writing and creating”, said Behrouz Boochani. “This film is about a long struggle to expose and challenge a system which is designed to dehumanise people who flee dictatorship and war. It is important that we have the first screening in Aotearoa New Zealand and Õtautahi Christchurch because this country and city are standing on the right side of history.”
This world premiere has been postponed several times due to COVID, but WORD is thrilled to be able to announce that it will have one screening only on Saturday 11 June and will be introduced by Mayor Lianne Dalziel and followed by a Q & A with Behrouz and Simon Kurian, Director, hosted by Professor Ekant Veer, of the University of Canterbury,
Tickets are available from Ticketek here
Presented in Partnership with Christchurch City Council, Screen CanterburyNZ and WORD Christchurch.
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