A documentary can mean many things to many people, some might say it’s a waste of time, some might find them educational and some might even find them downright boring. Being given the opportunity of creating and designing a film that might as well end up impacting a considerable amount of people was a challenging thought.
Immigration is seen as a long-standing issue in most parts of the world with the common sentiment, leaving their home countries to pursue a better life and a lead into a brighter future. It is a difficult process, uprooting your life and starting anew on shores you’ve never tread on, all alone and with no one to lean on. Each immigrant has a special story to share, and a new perspective to explore, and hence, we decided to create our documentary ‘The Untold Stories’. The documentary in itself aims to shed light on the class disparity between the tiers of immigrants and their contrasting lives.
As a part of the migrant population in the United Arab Emirates, my groupmates and I saw this topic to be very fitting in every sense. We have first hand knowledge and experience of what it means to be in another country, struggling and trying to provide for a better future.
By making this film, we aim to shed light on those groups of people who unfortunately have no voice in this social sphere, that being said, we have decided that the documentary should be left up to the interpretation of the viewer so our team decided to completely remove ourselves from the film. The documentary consists of four sets of immigrants from both white-collar and blue-collar jobs, and they take us through their journey and struggles. Since we feel so close to this film, we wanted the reactions and words of the interviewees to be sent across as raw as we could so, us, the crew decided to rely mostly on the shots and editing style to showcase the film and issue.
As a cameraman, I was tasked with what I think could either make or break a film. It was both exciting and challenging taking on this role, I wasn’t so well-versed in the technicalities of handling a camera. After a few hiccups, I got comfortable with the camera in my hand and things started working more naturally. Showing up for shoots was the most exciting part of this documentary, it allowed me to interact and converse with a set of people I would have never been able to approach. It was refreshing, it is one thing knowing about the hardships and misconceptions that surround the immigrant population within this region but it’s an entirely different feeling to have a conversation and understand their perspective on their situation.
I think it would be appropriate to say that this experience has further shaped my outlook on life and has made me more open to change and acceptance on various aspects of life, and has also made me understand my heritage a bit better. It was also an added bonus that I was teamed up with four talented and creative individuals.
signing out, The Raconteurs
My BCM workshop 