A Nelson woman who fled human rights violations 17 years ago will speak before a local screening of Human Flow, a documentary exploring the worldwide refugee crisis.
Clementine Segbeaya, who escaped the western African nation of Togo along with her husband and family in 2001, will speak of her experience as a refugee before the airing of the film at the Capital Theatre.
Human Flow, an epic journey led by the internationally renowned contemporary artist, filmmaker and activist, Ai Weiwei, is being presented in collaboration with Amnesty International Nelson and Touchstones Nelson.
Ai Weiwei writes, “When there is nowhere to go, nowhere is home.”
His film gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Captured over the course of an eventful year, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across 23 countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. Human Flow is a witness to its subjects and their desperate search for safety, shelter and justice: from teeming refugee camps to perilous ocean crossings to barbed-wire borders; from dislocation and disillusionment to courage, endurance and adaptation; from the haunting lure of lives left behind to the unknown potential of the future.
Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II.
Representatives of three Nelson refugee-sponsoring groups will have an information table at the event along with the local chapter of Amnesty International.
The film screens Saturday, January 27 at 7:00pm. Tickets are $15.00 - available at the Capitol Box Office and online at www.capitoltheatre.bc.ca
