On Saturday, I was honoured to be invited along as a guest speaker at an event entitled, “Exile: Dreams and Nightmares” at the BFI (British Film Institute), part of an impressive week-long programme to mark Refugee Week. Saturday’s event featured four powerful documentaries by Mohamed Maklouf, a film-maker, journalist and Libyan exile, including “Home In Exile” (22 mins, 2007), which poignantly explores the experiences — and sense of loss — of Libyan exiles in the US and Germany, “Who’s Afraid of the Censor?” (11 mins, 2008) which takes an unflinching look at the ways in which the Egyptian regime stifles freedom of expression in the world of Egyptian independent cinema (2008, 11min), and “The Cage” (13 mins, 2005), a wonderfully expressionistic piece exploring the personal impact of exile. The latter is an independently produced film, but the first two were made for al-Jazeera International.

“Home In Exile” is available below (in two parts), and I urge you to watch it: