IFFR
Mijke de Jong’s Along the Way offers new perspectives on our world, through the eyes of female refugees.
Directed by: Mijke de Jong
Year: 2022
Country: Netherlands
Length: 80 minutes
Along the way was set to open this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. However, a sudden lockdown threw a spanner in the works and the Along the Way screenings were canceled. Luckily, in a last-minute turn of events, De Jong was able to still present her latest film during the festival’s closing weekend, in person!
The film follows 19-year-old sisters Zahra (Malihe Rezaie) and Fatima (Nahid Rezaie) as they try to make their way to their family. Born to Afghan parents in Iran, the sisters, along with the rest of their family try to seek refuge and hope for a better future. When Zahra and Fatima suddenly lose their family, they will have to find a way to survive on their own. In a journey from Iran to Istanbul to refugee camp Moria in Greece, this social realist drama shows us what it’s like to be a refugee, from a female perspective. In a cinematic landscape where most works on this subject center men, this feels like a very needed angle.
The story behind the film is quite special. Dutch director Mijke de Jong was giving a workshop at camp Moria, when she was approached by the Rezaie sisters, who were interested in the world of filmmaking. The sisters decided to ask the director whether it’s possible for them to make a movie together about their own experiences. Upon her return to The Netherlands, De Jong decided that she wanted to make this happen.
While Along the Way is mostly a work of fiction, its narrative is rooted in a reality that many have to live. Soon after deciding this project had to be done, De Jong, the Rezaie sisters, the screenwriters of the film and an interpreter went to a house in Greece for a week. Here, the sisters told the team about their experiences fleeing while their country, which became the blueprint for the screenplay.
This subject matter feels perfectly fit for De Jong, who’s always been interested in representing outcasts and marginalized groups within our society. Her films feel less interested in dramatizing stories for entertainment value, and more focused on letting people who have been silenced by others tell their stories and offer new perspectives.
In Along the Way, De Jong makes the great decision to use the Rezaie Sisters’ experiences to offer this new perspective; letting them tell this story and listening to them and giving them a platform, instead of making this work all by herself. In fact, in between the fictionalized narrative sequences, the audience is presented various interviews that the Rezaie sisters have conducted with women in camp Moria. Here, the women talk about their unique experiences as female refugees, the discrimination they faced and why their journey had been the way it was so far. Mijke de Jong is a director who cares for social causes and it shows. Besides, the entire ensemble, including the extras (all credited!), being refugees themselves, adds even more to the integrity De Jong shows here, as both an artist and an activist.
Along the Way premiered at the 2022 International Film Festival Rotterdam and is set to be released in Dutch cinemas in April 2022
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