EIFF 2022: My Small Land

In My Small Land, Japanese writer-director Emma Kawawada, who’s making her feature debut, presents a touching and honest exploration of the Kurdish refugee experience in Japan through the lens of a young female protagonist. Drawing from interviews Kawawada conducted in 2018, the film invites viewers to confront notions of borders, identity and place as we witness the emotional and physical consequences of cultural displacement.

Arashi Lina makes her acting debut as the film's protagonist Sarya, a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee who grapples with her sense of identity after her father's asylum application is denied. Having moved to Japan at age five, Sarya has a solid grasp of the Japanese language and customs, and therefore struggles to relate to the sense of social dislocation experienced by the Kurdish community around her. Yet despite growing up in Japan, Sarya is also adrift from her classmates and friends by implicit circumstantial barriers, failing to 'fit in' to either of the contexts in which she resides.

Exploring themes of family, sacrifice and belonging, this coming-of-age film brings a sense of relation to its subject matter, encouraging us to consider the realities of the refugee experience. There are shades of Hirokazu Kore-eda in Kawawada’s filmmaking style, which is understandable given that she earned her stripes working with that esteemed Japanese director’s production company, BUN-BUKU. Like in Kore-eda’s films, scenes that depict moments of everyday life are imbued with profound emotional resonance. The heightened drama of the family's situation, meanwhile, is diffused by familiar moments of the mundane to which the audience can relate. The results are a touching and unique take on the nuances and complexities of human displacement.

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Rachel Jones is a student at University of Cambridge and part of Edinburgh’s International Film Festival’s Young Critics Programme 2022 – scroll on to read more from this year's Young Critics...