I was lucky enough to get an invitation for the premier of this documentary in Oxford earlier this week. This is the first time your intrepid reviewer will be reflecting on a film in its freshest possible form.
Moving to Mars follows a year in the lives of two families who move from a refugee camp in Thailand to Sheffield, UK. The camp where they start out is a haven for people fleeing Burma. “Haven” being a relative term though: in the camp they are safe from Burmese government attack, but they are effectively imprisoned in the camp, without proper citizenship or civil rights, etc. Like all refugee camps, it is a limbo, made somewhat comfortable by the sheer adaptability of the human residents.
The two families have had emigration to the UK fully organised by the UN, and they don’t need to go through some of the traumatic processes that most other refugees are subject to. But nonetheless they are very nervous, yet still excited about the imminent move.
When the day finally comes, we see them transported to Bangkok in a bus, where they stare wide-eyed at the people and traffic. Most of them have never been to a city before. They take on a zebra crossing with great trepidation… which is quite sensible, actually, given that it’s Bangkok.
In Sheffield, UK, all the family members are happy to have arrived - but things are strange. It’s cold, and dark. The heating doesn’t work, or even when it does work, the house still feels cold to them. They set up their eating utensils and dine together on the floor of their new house, as they did in the bamboo hut back in the refugee camp. Sheffield society is strange for all of them: language is perhaps the biggest barrier, but also customs, work, trying to find friends, and deal with being a total foreigner. Through a translator, the youngest girl tells the camera that a boy hits her every day at school. But she can’t do anything, because she doesn’t know enough English to explain things to the teacher. Her parents don’t know English either.
But the children soon adapt (again, that human trait). It’s the adults who have made the big sacrifice. By the end of the film, I’m not sure if the adults will ever be happy in this strange new place. It is cold and they don’t like the food, but at least they are free to move around - and they marvel at how policemen help you in the street, rather than just beating you or arresting you.
There’s good and bad. Great hope and happiness for the young, but also a huge sense of loss. All this is effortlessly portrayed in the film, which I consider to be an outstanding documentary. I hope it gets wide distribution.
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