80 AWW.COM.AUAUGUST 2017
“The best moment of my
life was giving birth to
my children. All three.”
is most certainly a chip off the campaigning
Redgrave block – Vanessa’s late brother, Corin,
was also a long-time activist with his sister.
InSea Sorrow, as well as visiting refugee
camps in Calais, France, Vanessa reveals her own
experiences asan evacuee during World War II and
her daughter,Nip/Tuckactress Joely Richardson
and her niece, actress Jemma Redgrave – even her
granddaughter Lily (Carlo’s
daughter) – all take part.
British peer Lord Alf Dubs
talks movingly about fleeing
Nazi-occupied Prague on
the Kindertransport as an
unaccompanied six-year-old
Jew who is eternally thankful
for the safe haven he found in Britain, which
allowed him to build a successful new life.
It’s a film, Vanessa says, she felt compelled to
make. She has been working for refugees for
decades, but the impetus to make her directorial
debut was instinctive. “It was when I saw the
lifeless body of that baby, Alan Kurdi, washed
up on the shore in Turkey,” she explains. The
images of three-year-old Alan, a Syrian of Kurdish
extraction whose family was attempting to flee war
in a leaky inflatable dingy, to join their relatives
in Canada, shocked the world. Yet, two years on,
the refugee crisis is worse than ever.
It’s an issue everyone must engage with, says
Vanessa. “What we’ve done is try and make a film
to remind us that humanity is something that we
have to protect or become inhuman ourselves.”
It’s “our own responsibility”,
announces Vanessa, who has
scant regard for Australia’s
off-shore detention centres.
“They’re concentration
camps really. I support all the
Australians who are trying to
stop that and get appropriate
welcome – appropriate meaning education, health
and jobs,” she expounds. “Democracy is about
equality. I’d say to Australians, you know your
grandfathers fought in a war. What did they give
their lives for?
“In my Uncle Robin’s case, it was fighting
Japanese fascism. He went behind the lines, as
well as fighting on his ships and ended his life in
the Pacific Ocean. My uncle was a pacifist when