PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Aida Begic, director of the film Never Leave Me.
Filmmaker Aida Begic presented her latest feature film, Never Leave Me, at the inaugural edition of the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival in China. Her new feature tells the story of children and post-war trauma. In preparing the film, she spent months working with aid groups and displaced Syrian families and orphans. She talks about the process, and how Never Leave Me mixes reality and fiction, something that interests her and informs her work as a filmmaker. Begic also discusses the fact that despite the serious and dramatic context of Never Leave Me, the film feels optimistic in representing the complexity of life, which is never truly black and white.
Never Leave Me: This is a story about pain, search for meaning in life and friendship of orphaned. Syrian boys – Isa, Ahmed, and Muataz – who live a difficult life as refugees in the magical, mythical Turkish city of Sanliurfa. In their search for recovery from traumatic past, the children will cross the path from destructiveness and hostility to meaningfulness and love. By finding friends in each other, the boys will find their inner peace.