Leave or stay. It is a choice that every refugee in our country has had to make at some point, but which has often faded into the background in the everyday news. After all, the decision has long since been overshadowed by a tumultuous boat trip, a stay in a refugee camp or a drawn-out asylum procedure.
Sahil Amar Aïssa (30) has set up a clever program around this often life-determining choice, Lips concluded following watching the first episode of Fight or flight. Aïssa has already presented more socially involved programs, but this is the first one he developed himself.
In Fight or flight he always portrays several people who had to deal with the same conflict. They either stayed or left. This time it was sister Aelaf (15) and brother Ashraf (18) who fled from the Iraqi Mosul to the Netherlands for the threat of IS. The photos Ashraf took of the inflatable boat that carried them away from the falling missiles showed how close the two had sailed past the abyss.
From a gallery flat in Soest, they looked back on what was a happy childhood up until nine years ago. They then played football with their cousin Azeez. He had stayed behind in Mosul, survived and explained in fluent English that he photographed to show the world that people still lived among the rubble of the war. Rubble among which bombs and bones were still found.
The two stories entwined touchingly. Sometimes Aïssa might have let the images speak a little more, but the idea was beautiful. Just like the meeting between the relatives that followed. There the three ran through the Iraqi dust laughing following a ball once more. And for a moment it seemed as if nothing had happened.
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