The Walk
Tamara Kotevska / Syria, Türkiye, France, Palestine, Greece & United Kingdom / 2023 / 79 min
The director of 'Honeyland' returns with a contemporary fairytale made with sensitivity and poetry as a giant puppet travels from Syria up through Europe to tell the story of migration from a child's perspective.
In her second feature film, Macedonian Tamara Kotevska, who directed the Oscar-nominated ‘Honeyland’, begins a long journey from the Syrian border to Turkey and travels all the way up through Europe to the English Channel. Her camera follows two nine-year-old girls who fled Aleppo and the war in Syria in search of a new home. Asil is trapped in Turkey, orphaned, without a passport, yet full of hope. Amal is also a refugee, but thanks to her giant boots, she can travel the world across borders and nothing can stop her. Not even the hateful Christian fanatics she encounters along the way. For Amal, which means hope in Arabic, is a 3.5 metre tall puppet. Her long legs take her through vast landscapes and small villages. She breathes the trees, feels the wings of butterflies, is greeted with music and joy and befriends children in a refugee camp, young migrants sleeping under bridges and the Pope himself. But which road leads home when you’re a refugee child?