BAG MOHAJER – Refugee Bag

Documentary, 30 minutes – 2017

Refugees sew bags from boats and life jackets stranded on Lesbos. They call their project “Bag Mohajer” – Bag of the Refugee. With their work, the seamsters want to take a part of their life and their flight stories to places they can’t visit themselves.

The film lets three young men from Afghanistan explain how they sew bags from life boats and life jackets that are washed up on the Isle of Lesbos. For them, the manufacturing of the bags is a way to tell their story and to take a part of their flight experience to places they aren’t allowed to travel to, themselves.
The film accompanies the production of a bag in calm images – from the collection of boats on Lesbos to the completion in the workshop in Athens. The production of the bags also acquaints us with the life and flight stories of the protagonists and their everyday life.

Director. Adrian Oeser
DOP: Evangelos Anthimos
Sound: Maleen Harlan
Motion Design: Moril Gnyoke
Sounddesign: Tim Heumesser

● Barcelona Human Rights Film Festival Barcelona/Paris/NYC 2017

● Budapest Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival 2017

● Halle/Saale Deutscher Filmmusikpreis 2017, Nominierung Nachwuchspreis

● Rom Festival Internazionale di Cinema, Diritti Umani e Ambiente nel Mediterraneo – MEDIR 2017

● Madrid Festival de Cine de Madrid FCM-PNR 2017

● Ponferrada Ponferrada Film Festival 2017

● Ludwigsburg One Horizon Refugee Filmfestival 2017

● Buenos Aires International Human Rights Film Festival (FICDH) 2017

● Hamburg Flimmerfest 2017

● Vicenza Working Title Film Festival 2017

● Potsdam Sehsüchte Internationales Studentenfilmfestival 2017

● Frankfurt Lichter Filmfest Frankfurt International 2017