Hours Of Ours

There have been many documentaries about the dangerous journeys many refugees face as they flee their homeland but fewer about the limbo state that many of them end up in. Sometimes the waiting game is played out in camps - as documented in the likes of Tiny Souls and sometimes, as with Flee, we see how people can end up waiting in a second state until they get access to a third.

This is what has happened to the Ibrahim family, who are the focal point of this film. They find themselves in Bangkok trying to avoid the attention of the Thai government, while their asylum visas for Canada are processed. Although the family have UN refugee status, it’s a grey area in Thailand - which has not signed up to the 1951 Refugee Convention - meaning that even though they can access certain services they also run the constant risk of arrest when they go out.

The Ibrahims’ story is followed over several years by Komtouch Napattaloong - making his debut - who also considers the nature of his own sense of national identity, as an expat returning home to Thailand and finding it hard to fit back in, through the course of the film.

It was via his work with an NGO that Napattaloong met Aswera and Hashim Ibrahim and their three children and it was through the friendship that grew between them this film was born.

The adults, understandably, think most about either the past or the future. “I can work and I can change my life,” says Aswera when asked about her hopes in Canada. She also talks about the large home they were forced to flee in Sudan, which lies in contrast to the small apartment they have in Thailand.

We can see time and identity are running differently for the children, however, as they have quickly learnt Thai with their classmates and inevitably, after four or five years have gone by, have little recollection of what has gone before. This idea of shifting identities is also something Napattaloong can relate to, although the structure of the film means this is a grace note rather than major consideration. In the final section, we see how the family has to go through a period of forced separation in order to meet the criteria to leave the country underlying just how unnecessarily cruel asylum systems can be.

There is a home video feel to much of what we see as the years grind on while the Ibrahims’ paperwork moves slowly through the system but if the film is a bit baggy in places it serves to underline the boredom that can come with living in limbo. Napattaloong’s attachment to the family also means it comes with an intimacy that speaks from the heart.