Ashamedly for many of us around the world, the daily plight of roughly 12 million displaced refugees is not something we would consider.
Warehoused (a term for refugees stuck in encampments), a Kickstarter backed documentary project by filmmakers Vincent Vittorio and Asher Emmanuel, shines a light on the refugee crisis that exists in our world today and more specifically the situation at Kenyan refugee camp Dadaab, a camp that currently houses 100's of thousands of refugees from neighbouring countries in an area that was built for no more than a 90,000 person capacity.
Vittorio and Emmanuel place the viewer into Dadaab as we become acutely aware of the plight of these people, who wanted nothing more than a better life or quite literally an escape from imminent danger or in some cases starvation but have instead found themselves found in an often endless loop of outdated polices, that see many families and individuals stuck within the confines of Dadaab camp for decades.
While it feels as though Vittorio and Emmanuel could've focussed on more refugees and told their often unheard of stories, the filmmakers collect a wide ranging collection of talking heads to walk us through life in the Dadaab camp and what potential freedom may mean to those that have long sort to start their lives out anew and provide a better life for themselves and often their direct family members.
We hear first hand accounts from refugee Liban Rashid and his longwinded plight to join his family in America, journalist and author Ben Rawlence who speaks candidly about investigations his done into the camp and its often borderline neglectful management that is under far too much pressure to keep up and overall we get a clear understanding that Dadaab's situation has reached a boiling point and that the worldwide refugee crisis is something we should no longer be ignoring.
Final Say -
At quite a short runtime of around 70 minutes, Warehoused feels like it could've explored situations further or conducted a broader coverage of more actual refugees but for a piece made for shining a light on an oft-unspoken situation, Warehoused is an important piece of the overall puzzle that will hopefully be put together in an effort to help these 100's of thousands of misplaced people find their freedom and safety in our big wide world.
3 ½ community radio stations out of 5
Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys)
