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Home > 26 June, Goethe-Institut, HOPE Director: Steve Thomas

26 June, Goethe-Institut, HOPE Director: Steve Thomas

HOPE Director Steve Thomas Visits Tokyo for Japan Premiere

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Director Steve Thomas will be in Tokyo June 25th and 26th for the Japan premiere of his critically acclaimed documentary HOPE at the Third Annual Refugee Film Festival.  The weeklong festival, a UNHCR initiative raising awareness for the plight of the world’s 33 million refugees and internally displaced persons, opens June 20th with showings of over thirty award winning documentaries, features, and short films.  HOPE will play Thursday, June 26th at the Goethe-Institut Japan.

HOPE is the story of Amal Basri, one of seven survivors from the sinking of a people-smuggling boat off the coast of Australia in 2001 that claimed over 350 lives, including that of her son.  An Iraqi refugee, she clung 22 hours to a floating corpse.  The film chronicles her fight to ensure the disaster is not forgotten, re-unite her family, and “find what it was she lost in the ocean.”

Mr. Thomas is a professor at the Victorian College of the Arts Film & TV School in Melbourne, where he now combines teaching with practice and research.  Over the past fifteen years, he has written, directed and produced numerous independent documentaries for television and festival release.  Black Man’s Houses, a re-examination of Tasmanian Aboriginal history through the search for lost graves on Flinders Island, won the Rouben Mammoulian and Short Film Awards at the Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals.  Least Said, Soonest Mended, based on his own sister’s experience of giving up a baby for adoption in secrecy in the 1960s, won the United Nations Association Media Peace Award. 

For more information visit:
http://www.hopedocumentary.com.au/