Director Alfred Pek
Score 6/6

Freedom Street is the harrowing story of Joniad, Ashfaq and Azizah, three refugees who have been stuck in Makassar, Indonesia for several years as a result of Australia’s border policy. Since 2013, there are currently just under 14000 refugees in Indonesia and every day their hopes for resettlement are diminishing. Freedom Street presents the refugees’ stories while deconstructing Australian policy in a series of conversations with various experts.

I know it’s not the best way to start a review but I suppose it’s something that we all know, people are bastards and for the most part we are scared of what we don’t know or understand. Fear of course is something that can easily be manipulated, something that has been done by many Australian politicians over the years. I only say this because there was something interesting said when describing immigration in the 70’s where the Australian Immigration Minister and Shadow Immigration Minister held town hall style meetings and talked to people about refugees and the benefits they would bring to Australia and perhaps that is something that is still needed. Personally I’m not entirely sure where I sit on the whole immigration issue and will readily admit that at times I find it confusing. But immigrants who take their lives into their own hands and arrive in Australia via boat should be admired, especially after seeing the footage of coming to Australia via boat in another documentary that featured in the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Batoor: A Refugee Journey. The most compelling and confronting parts of the documentary were when the refugees Joniad, Azizah and Ashfaq talked about their stories. With documentaries about hot button issues like immigration and refugees it is very easy to overly preachy and take a combative stance against the audience and it was great to see that director Alfred Pek didn’t fall into that trap and just let the facts speak for themselves. There was an interesting point made by Dr. Savitri Taylor about immigration of Europeans to Australia in 1788 and the whole concept of ‘we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’ which made me laugh a little about the hypocrisy of immigration to Australia via boat, though I am sure at least some of the white people who immigrated to Australia in 1788 didn’t have a say in the matter. There were also other interesting points that were made by other people who were interviewed about immigration via boat as opposed to via plane which definitely explained that famous quote by the former Prime Minister John Howard.