Australian
Screen

Clip description

Former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, and former Liberal Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Ian MacPhee, talk to camera about the impact of mandatory detention on a child’s future and what a country’s immigration policy says about the way it wants to be viewed by the international community. Rob Silberstein talks about the impact of trauma and migration on his German-Jewish father who came to Australia as a refugee after the Second World War. As we hear Rob’s voice-over, we see a silhouette of Ali watching the sunset over the ocean.

Curator’s notes

Rob Silberstein’s engagement with Ali is slightly different to the rest of the Kirby family’s. He understands, as the others cannot, the impact of trauma on a person – having witnessed his own father’s refugee experience adjusting to life in Australia. Questions of home, belonging and safety are constant themes throughout this film, and Rob’s observations of Ali shed some light on Ali’s internal processes. Ali (not his real name) hovers as a strange and silent presence throughout the film. His image is blurred out and his voice has been removed from the film (to protect his identity). His voice is only ‘heard’ through text (see clip two) and letters. This present absence highlights Law’s pressing point – that the human impacts of the mandatory detention policies (as they stood in February 2004) erase the experience of childhood, and that no child should have to go through the compounded trauma that Ali has suffered in his three years in detention. While Malcolm Fraser and Ian MacPhee contextualise the human consequences in political terms, Rob’s personal reflections resonate far deeper. And all the while, the blurry outline of Ali sits silent, watching the sunset.