point of contact

DOSSIER 2006
The official online publication of the
Syracuse International Film Festival, Vol.3
A Point of Contact Production

Beyond Borders
Personal Stories from a Small Planet
Produced by the Youth Media Network

Film Review by Richard Breyer

This is a composite of eleven stories of young people who have found ways to overcome their fears. Each story is very powerful and says much about the resiliency of children. The eleven documentaries also demonstrate the importance of expressing oneself and of working to make the world a better place.

For example, a ten-year-old Colombian boy whose family were forced to leave their farm and who lives with the threat of violence in the capital, Bogotá, keeps his sprits up by singing rap, playing the guitar and practicing Karate. In another documentary we meet a young girl whose family were forced to leave Afghanistan. The reason, she tells us, is the Taliban found out that her mother was home schooling her and neighbor’s children. She is studying to be a doctor a University of Virginia. A boy from Sierra Leone shares his story of being abducted and forced to be a child soldier during his country’s civil war. He’s back home now, going to school and planning to be either a minister or a doctor. There is another touching story about a girl whose family fled the violence and injustice of Argentina. She is active in the anti-Iraq war movement in her community in the US because she sees parallels between the Patriot Act and other policies of the Bush Administration to what happened in her country.