Fridoon Joinda: Student and Filmmaker
My interest in film and technology goes back years to growing up in Afghanistan. I started university in Kabul, studying computer science, but film was my great love. It was a perfect fit for me – I come from a family that is devoted to the arts and to politics. I started producing videos and soon I was working for a television station, learning many editing techniques I needed to deepen my skills. Now I am a student at the American College in Greece, studying communications. My passion for film continues – I am just beginning a connection with an arts festival in Athens as a filmmaker, and I am about to begin producing a short documentary profiling the lives of refugees in Greece.
The project I am most proud of is the first film I worked on while I was on the island of Lesvos. Its title is “Nice Lie,” and it examines the lack of connection between the high ideals of the European Union with its dedication to human rights and dignity for all people with the way refugees are being treated in the camps on the Greek islands, where they had their first taste of Europe. It was an extremely challenging project; I had to use a small simple camera, I had no laptop of my own, and I had no financial resources. I had to learn the trust of the people I interviewed – many had come from places of political oppression and were not comfortable expressing difficult perspectives, especially to a camera. The entire project was completely my own: vision, filming, editing, publishing & distribution. All the technical work had to be done on a series of borrowed laptops and I had no office for the post-production work.
The fact that I was able to overcome all those challenges and produce a film that has spoken to people all over Europe is something I am very proud of.
After that film, I continued to direct films with limited resources but with a strong political perspective. My film “Moria 35” was honored by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation in Germany and I was invited to give a series of post-film discussions in several German cities. “I’m not Dangerous” was another film that received recognition – I won an award for “the prevention of xenophobia” from the Youth Video Festival on Migration sponsored by the UN and the IOM.
From meeting these challenges, I have emerged even more dedicated to telling the stories of the most vulnerable, to examining the impact political decisions have on their lives, to continue the fight for human rights and dignity for all people.