“Dear Muslim…”

Germany, Poland | 2005 | 35 Minutes | Chechen, Russian

How do I explain to a small child what it means to flee? A documentary film about the fate of a family that fled the war in Chechnya.

“Dear Muslim…” – This is how Sacita’s diary begins, which she writes to her four-year-old son Muslim to help him understand what his parents experienced during the war in Chechnya. Why they fled to Poland. So that he will one day find his way in an unknown future, when they themselves may no longer be alive, as she believes.

Sacita, her husband Said-Selim and Muslim are sitting in their small room in a refugee centre in a provincial town in eastern Poland, waiting for their asylum decision – but inwardly they have not yet “arrived”:

They are living completely in the horrors of war from the past, which they documented themselves for years with photo and video cameras.

From these photographic documents, their stories and the diary written by their mother to her young son Muslim, an intimate portrait of the family and their personal war history emerges.

Credits

Editors: Kerstin Nickig, Cecylja Pacura
Sound: Teresa Stępień
Music: Christoph Vonderau
Production Companies: TIME PRINTS und TVP1