THE ROADS OF EXILE

A feature documentary project tracing the journeys refugees must make.
WORK SAMPLE

THE ROADS OF EXILE

A film using the unique voices of individual refugees to highlight their previous lives, dangerous journeys and attempts to integrate into Western culture.

Since the peak of the current refugee crisis in 2014, over 1.8 million refugees have entered Europe, fleeing from violence, persecution, poverty, war, and starvation.

While the flood of refugees has slowed somewhat, the inflammatory, often inaccurate rhetoric surrounding the topic of immigration and refugees has spiked again, leading to a growing surge of anti-immigrant voices in both the US and Europe as well as an increase in violence toward refugees.

Each stunning narrative serves as a counterpoint to challenge this growing culture of fear in the US and Europe by creating empathy and underscoring our common ground.

 

Join us in telling their story.

OUR VISION

The Roads of Exile is a series of intimate portraits, conversations that could happen over a kitchen table bathed in natural light. Conversations that become almost reverent in their contrast between the humanity of the speaker and the stark tragedy they’ve endured.

Much like Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women, our goal is to underscore the devastating impact of conflict, creating empathy with a shared experience. Even as the narratives are a collection of grim road trips, we are left with a sense of hope that these horrific events can be endured and overcome.

 

Read the director’s statement.

“Apparently nobody wants to know that contemporary history has created a new kind of human beings.

The kind that are put in concentration camps by their foes,

and in internment camps by their friends.”

Hannah Arendt, 1943 from We Refugees

Daniel Smith

Writer | Director | Producer

Award-winning screenwriter and veteran Daniel W Smith graduated from George Mason University, the Joint Military Intelligence College, and holds an MFA in both Screenwriting and Producing from the New York Film Academy. Previous work includes 50/10 Saul Turteltaub (2016) | Tahriib (Those Who Travel North) | Landfill | Freedom of Movement Festival (2018) and has two more in production.

link to website  

Carla Roda

Director | Producer | Editor

Carla Roda is an award winning director, editor and producer from Barcelona, Spain currently based in LA. She’s worked all over the world, including Spain, France, Canada, Australia, and the US. This year she was selected to be one of the mentees in the “Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship,” a program designed to cultivate the careers of emerging editors from diverse backgrounds.

  

Pavlina Popovska

Cinematographer

Pavlina is an award-winning cinematographer and photographer with a record of achievements in the field of still and moving images. She graduated with an MFA in photography from the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles.  Most recently,  she was director of photography on the prize-winning documentary “50/10 Saul Turteltaub,” and was the lead photographer for Royal Gor Studio for the Brent Shapiro Foundation in 2015.

Joaco BARCaLA

Cinematographer

Joaco Barcala was born in Uruguay, where he graduated from Visual Arts and New Media. Since then, his work has focused on visual art production and photography, focusing on human relationships and social issues. He has participated in feature films, advertising and documentaries as a filmmaker, camera and photographer. As a photojournalist he has focalized his work on housing and gender as well as film and dance. Since 2014 he lives in Barcelona, Spain.

   

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Contact Us

We want to hear from you! Whether it's to tell us your story or learn more about how you can support the project, shoot us a message in the form to the left and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. If you just want to stay in the loop, make sure you sign up for our mailing list!

 

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