In 2009, the Norwegian government introduced several measures to limit immigration. One of the measures was to give unaccompanied asylum-seeking children temporary residence permits. They will be returned to their country of origin when they turn 18. In Norway, the child welfare service has the responsibility for caring for children without close caregivers. This does not apply to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children between the ages of 15 and 18. In the film NOWHERE HOME, we get to know Goli from Kurdistan. He was deported from Norway the day after he turned 18 and we follow him as he sets out on another journey. The brothers Hassan and Husein are from Afghanistan. Husein was physically paralyzed with fear when they were rejected in Norway. We are also present when Khalid receives his final answer from the Immigration Appeals Board on his 18th birthday. NOWHERE HOME is a close, provocative and moving film about young people who fight to keep their hope in life. The film questions what happens when we violate basic ethical principles.

Margreth about the film

As I get to know the young people at the reception center for unaccompanied minors at Salhus, I think; How am I going to put their stories out in the public domain so that we, Norwegians, we as a nation can connect to what they have experienced, to the brutality of war, the arbitrariness of violence. Is that even possible?

I begin to doubt whether this film can be told as a documentary. Are not the costs of the actors too high? Are not the young people too vulnerable?

Then comes July 22. The government quarter and Utøya. The unimaginable. A national trauma. The first eyewitness accounts. The eyes. I see it in their eyes. Everyone sees it in their eyes. What they have been through. Then it strikes me that I have seen these eyes, this body language for two years. I have been the recipient of such stories for 2 years. It is just that the boys I have filmed, they have no one to help them with their experiences. When grief is shared, it is halved, because it is carried by more people. They live completely alone with their losses and secrets of catastrophe.

Fear is paralyzing. The sound of fear is silence. Then silence came to us. After three days in front of the TV, I fall asleep with my laptop on my lap. Still the news in the background. I dream. I relive in my dream what I have seen on TV. But then the dream changes, it is no longer Norwegian youth trying to get ashore. It is the boys in my film. And the police who in the dream have helped so many ashore, they hold out their hand, stop them, they ask their age. Those who are 18 years old are asked to turn back.

CREDITS

DIRECTOR: Margreth Olin

WRITER: Margreth Olin

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Øystein Mamen

EDITING: Helge Billing og Michal Leszczylowski

SOUND: Dìana Karlsdòttir

COMPOSER: Rebekka Karijord

CAST: Goli mohammed Ali, Hassan and Husein Ali, Khalid Faqiri and more.

PRODUSER: Margreth Olin

DISTRIBUTOR: Norsk Filmdistribusjon AS