Nowhere Home

"Is the reason why we have a system that doesn't recognize other people's suffering, because we can keep it at a distance?" This is the question filmmaker Margreth Olin asks herself halfway through her documentary about Norwegian policy on asylum seekers who are minors. Her film is an attempt to bring the suffering into the open. She follows a number of boys placed in Salhus, a center offering temporary residence for 20 child asylum seekers. While they're still hoping for an extension of their asylum status, the date of their 18th birthday hangs like a Sword of Damocles above their head. Most of them will be deported as soon as they come of age, and that means an uncertain future in Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq or other war-torn regions. The fear and the hopelessness often lead to psychological problems, and in some cases to self-destructive behavior. Olin follows one of the boys even after his deportation. It takes the boy two months to return to Europe, where an existence as an illegal immigrant is still better than life in Iraqi Kurdistan. Nowhere Home uncovers the reality of a question that has been one of Europe's major moral dilemmas for many years.