VIDEO INSTALLATION
2019
Duration: 21 minutes
Amir Jan & Anna Knappe
Warland is a film about belonging to a place one does not know or recognize as home. In the film, young Afghan migrants who were born outside Afghanistan, talk about their so-called homeland which they have never seen. For Afghan migrants, the homeland is not only a matter of identity, but also the place where they are forcefully deported when their residence permits in other countries end or are not granted, or when they are born in a country that does not recognize them. Forceful deportations, no matter how they are justified by the deporting society, are traumatic experiences for the individuals who are forced to experience them. Deportations and detentions destroy dreams, separate families, and create displacement by embedding the experiences in the collective memory of generations. For the young Afghans in the film, this collective memory then becomes part of their national identity, part of what being an Afghan means.
