‘Lost Land’: A tale of Rohingya children on a perilous journey

The world’s sympathy for the Rohingya has an expiration date, and as the news cycle moves on, so has the attention and funding for one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

Into this void of forgetting steps in “Lost Land” or “Hara Watan”, its original name in the Rohingya language, a film recently screened at the 13th Bosphorus Film Festival in Istanbul, aiming to be a powerful antidote to that collective amnesia.

The film follows two Rohingya children, a minority Muslim group from Myanmar who have been systematically denied citizenship and faced violent persecution, leading to a mass exodus.

For its Japanese director Akio Fujimoto, the festival visit was a personal milestone, telling TRT World that he has “long admired Turkish films, including those by Semih Kaplanoglu, and had wanted to visit someday”. He expressed deep appreciation for “Istanbul’s rich cultural heritage,” and said he “thoroughly enjoyed his time” here.

His film, however, tells a story of displacement far from cultural capitals. A co-production between Japan, France, Germany, and Malaysia, “Lost Land” sheds light on the Rohingya from the vantage point of their most vulnerable: children.

The long-suffering Rohingya

The project was born from Fujimoto’s 12 years of film work in Southeast Asia, “particularly in Myanmar,” where the Rohingya lived for centuries before being expelled by authorities.

He tells TRT World that any open discussion about the Rohingya who remained, living in deplorable conditions, was “taboo,” and he initially refrained from working on the film due to “fear of losing both my work and friends in the country.”

Yet as he followed reports of their persecution, his position became untenable. “I felt ashamed for having ignored their voices and carried a deep sense of guilt,” he reveals. That guilt became the driving force behind “Lost Land.”

The film’s profound authenticity stems from its cast. Fujimoto cast more than 200 Rohingya people, none of them trained actors, and the film is the first to be primarily in the Rohingya language.

“The Rohingya people cannot communicate through written language, all direction on set was given orally,” Fujimoto said. Despite this, and the director speaking only Japanese, he reported that “there were virtually no communication issues.”

The story follows two young siblings, a nine-year-old girl named Somira and her four-year-old brother, Shafi.

After leaving their temporary home in Bangladesh to reach Malaysia, they are abandoned by human traffickers in Thailand. Separated from their adult caregivers, they continue their trek through jungles and across rivers alone, sustained by help from fellow travellers and kind locals.

A poignant visual motif ties their journey together: Somira’s saffron-coloured Adidas jersey, later echoed by the saffron-coloured blanket her brother Shafi cocoons himself in.

‘People without nationality or citizenship’

“Depicting their journey was essential to express the reality of the Rohingya — people without nationality or citizenship,” Fujimoto said in his Director’s Statement for the Venice Biennale, where the film won the Special Jury Prize. They are, he said, “forced to live in precarious conditions wherever they go, always searching for a place to truly belong.”

This statelessness is not just a theme in the film, but a reality for its stars. The real-life Rohingya siblings Shomira Rias Uddin and Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin, who play Somira and Shafi respectively, could not accompany Fujimoto to the Bosphorus Festival in Istanbul.

The reason is a stark summary of their plight: “they are not recognised as refugees in any country… and remain in a precarious and unstable position,” with no passports to travel.

Fujimoto hopes his film can bridge that distance. He concludes by saying “If cinema is an art form that can serve as a metaphor for ‘living together’, I hope that through this film, the Rohingya — who may seem distant to many — can feel closer to us, as neighbours, as friends.”