In the year since the cultural shift ignited by the 2016 election, there have already been a handful of films that have taken on the ongoing war in Syria and the refugee crisis it has sparked. (Two of them — “City of Ghosts” and “Last Men In Aleppo” — made our list of the best docs of 2017.) These films, which are often painful to watch, let alone to capture on film, paint a shocking picture of pain and suffering while simultaneously indicting the global community for its failure to act (or even sustain interest). Taken together as a body of work they draw a portrait that spans from the origins of the devastating war, to the ruins of once-great cities, to the harrowing journeys that hundreds of thousands of families have made across seas and mountains and borders all in the name of safety. But what happens when a family finds itself, after years in a refugee camp, finally on its way to America? To the land of freedom and opportunity? What’s it like to finally make it? Alexandra Shiva tackles these questions in her new documentary “This Is Home,” but the answers she offers are anything but comforting.
What’s so intriguing about “This Is Home” is that it begins where so many other stories end: the moment a family lands in America. The film follows four newly arrived families in Baltimore as they attempt to settle in and become self-sufficient — a complicated challenge that is far more difficult than most would imagine. Not only are there linguistic and cultural barriers, but so too is there a clock: each family is given just eight months to work with a resettlement agency to find well-paying jobs, get their children comfortable in school and generally adapt to an entirely new life. On top of all of it, though, is the trauma. Khaldoun, who arrives with his wife and children, can’t work many of the best jobs because part of his leg was removed when he was tortured as a prisoner in Syria. In another family, a teenage boy struggles to fit in at school — and to sleep at night — because of his PTSD.
The list of challenges that each of the families face goes on — translators are too few and far between, strangers are cruel and suspicious, and everybody dreams of someday returning home — but they are not without hope. Which is one place in particular where Shiva’s film succeeds: It would be so easy to paint a bleak picture of these families who are almost chronically let down by the system and the grotesque failings of the great country that is America, but instead “This Is Home” offers up a nuanced and tonally balanced take, embodying misfortune and hope in even measure. And Shiva’s film is better for it. Because it’s hard not to view “This Is Home” as a piece of advocacy, a rallying cry for compassion and empathy. But to succeed as such, Shiva must walk a fine line between hurt and optimism: without hurt there is room for apathy, and without hope, despair.
More importantly, though, “This Is Home” takes the time to humanize each of the families at its core, giving each person the space they need to be full, rounded people. Juxtaposed with the lean structure of the film, this humanity speaks to Shiva’s ability to find telling moments that are characteristic of the struggles of each family and the larger context of their place in a damningly bureaucratic system. “This Is Home” mostly manages to pack eight months worth of stories into 91 minutes without short-shifting any of the many narratives it juggles.
Still, despite taking the time to cast a light on the missteps that some refugees make, it’s easy to argue that “This Is Home” offers too rosy a perspective. For all the goodwill it builds, it’s hard to imagine someone who is staunchly opposed to immigration would be willing to take heed of Shiva’s film’s message. Which is not necessarily a fault of “This Is Home,” but may, in fact, be a fault of the deeply partisan time into which the film was born. Still, “This Is Home” is no “City of Ghosts” or “Last Men In Aleppo,” it is unlikely to cause the seismic quake required to shake the apathy from the masses — as neither of those films did either — but it is a much-needed reminder that a journey never quite ends when you think it does. [A-]
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