Patricia, Alain and Afshin arrived in the country without parents when they were children. And it is alone, too, that they have undertaken to build their lives here. Alone, by Paul Tom, tells about their respective trajectories which, as unique as they are, are not isolated. It is said that some 400 children arrive in the country each year unaccompanied, fleeing countries where they are threatened.
The experience of immigration is familiar to the director, cameraman and editor, who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand to Cambodian parents. Child-level immigration was already at the heart of his documentary Baggage. One of the strengths of Alone is to clearly show the cleavage between the past life of refugees, through interviews, and their present in Canada, through an animation by Mélanie Baillairgé, whose drawings represent these mothers and fathers whom we don’t see any more. “The transmission of knowledge does not take place smoothly” when there is such a break in life stories, says Paul Tom.
The experiences recounted here are positive, despite the tattered lives these refugees have left behind. “I don’t think they’re all happy stories, but we took this angle to emphasize the duty of hospitality,” says the director. The refugees presented here “met generous people, who took care of them,” Paul Tom emphasizes. What drives them is hope, he continues. “Hope, that beautiful thing that moves mountains, they’ve got it. “
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