Return to Life

CinemaSerf

Using real life refugees to gently dramatise the story, this is essentially still a documentary that follows a family recently arrived from Eastern Europe into a United Kingdom that was, itself, still recovering from devastation of the War. With next to no English and an natural wariness of just about everything, the father "Josef", his wife "Hannah", his own mother and the couple's young son must get used to a new society. A nation where the police need not spell doom if you encounter them; where the (pre-decimal) money is different and where he fears that his own national identity - and that of those he loves - will be subsumed into a new culture, language and set of traditions. Film-maker John Krish has shot this hand-held and intimately capturing the faces of these folks, now safe but still suspicious of their new surroundings, really quite effectively and for half an hour you can't help but feel a degree of empathy for those fleeing oppression and hopelessness. It certainly offers food for thought.