um for most immigrants who have come to
live in Britain they’re often asked the
question where are you from I’ve been
asked that plenty of times and it’s led
me to question where am i from what is
home is it a location is it the place
where you were born
is it a town a village a community or is
it just a feeling and I think for me
it’s about belonging and it’s about
identity and it goes even deeper it’s
about who we are as people as an
immigrant myself I have been twice
removed from my origins my father was
born in India and in fact today is a
really special day because it’s the 18th
of November and today my father would
have been 99 if he was still alive so
it’s a very special day for me to be
standing in front talking about my
father so my father was born in India
but at the age of 16 he went to Tanzania
as part of the British colonial service
to work and live out there ten years
later in 1947 at partition his country
India became Pakistan so suddenly he was
technically homeless but actually he
wasn’t because he was in Tanzania his
new adopted home a place where he was
living and working he fell in love with
my mother and in time me and my siblings
were born apart from this crazy haircut
that my mum gave me it was a great place
to grow up and we were happy there my
father’s origins Pakistan was a distant
place my grandparents lived there we
kind of had warm fuzzy feelings about it
and what was that how did that come
about of having some kind of connection
to a land so far away that I’d never
been to I realized that even though I
spoke English in school Swahili in the
streets at home I spoke Urdu and that
was a language that sort of connected me
with a culture that I understood through
my parents and
that language so it’s all sorts of
things that connects us to who we are
and where we belong at the age of 12
we moved once again and I came to live
in England
Coventry the butt of many jokes I was to
discover but actually Coventry was far
from a joke it was the place where I
learned to eat fish and chips in the
newspaper walking in the snow it was
where my neighbors and friends helped me
understand what it was like to be an
English kid to live in an England
English environment and they made us
feel at home to the point that this
became my home England is my home and
it’s allowed me to feel safe enough to
then take on a career that takes me all
over the world as a filmmaker I get sent
to far-flung places and when I get there
I have to immediately find myself a home
I have to kind of familiarize myself
with the language the culture the
nuances and also immerse myself in other
people’s lives
and other people welcomed me into their
lives and into their homes and through
tapping this lifeblood of who they are I
start feeling at home to be able to tell
their stories so I thought what better
way to talk about what home means to
people but through these people who have
met over the years making films about
them one of the most recent films that I
made it was a three-part series for the
BBC called dangerous borders and it was
about partition seventy years on and it
was looking at how the people in India
and Pakistan had formed their lives in
those frontiers what had become of them
so I traveled with a presenter from the
South of Pakistan to the north over a
five-week period my presenter of
non-server his parents are from Pakistan
but he was born in the Netherlands and
has grown up in Burnley of all places as
he Allah says Burnley and he says I say
it wrong but he is from Burnley and he
felt nothing but British
so British that he even joined the
British Army he was willing to die for
his country Pakistan the land of his
ancestors and his parents actually was a
distant thing he pushed it aside why did
he do that because he’s faced racism he
was called a Paki at school he was
beaten up for being a Paki so he just
put that part of his life away at a
distance and didn’t want anything to do
with it he shut it off so then I took
him on this journey and I just like to
show you a clip this is at the end of
the journey after our five weeks of
having travelled over a thousand miles
this is the realization that Adnan came
up – I’m leaving Pakistan with a real
sense of optimism for the future and not
just for this country but for myself as
a British Pakistani this is the end of
my journey here in Pakistan it’s not the
end of my relationship with Pakistan I
feel more of a Pakistani and feel like
it’s more of me and I feel that it’s
just gonna get more and more deeper as I
visit this country more to support me
so after those five weeks by engaging
with people along that journey but non
opened something up in his heart he
opened a door that had been shut in the
house that he knew but didn’t want to
open this gave him a sense of belonging
the familiarity of the smells the tastes
looking like a lot of people around him
but man suddenly discovered a home that
he didn’t know he had that he’d put
aside the next film that I’m going to
talk about is called women weddings war
in me this was a film I made about eight
years ago with a young Afghan girl
called nella waha Pyatt she was born in
Afghanistan and fled Afghanistan because
of war her parents brought her to safety
in England and she grew up in Camden and
for all intents and purposes she is a
Camden girl in every way that you could
imagine and but what what was
interesting is that she actually thought
that she was still very Afghan she
identified with being Afghani and she
just thought that I’m not really English
and I’d like you to see this next clip
this is now she’s 21 in London you could
be whatever the hell you want and I love
what being here has made me now wasn’t
born in Britain she arrived here when
she was six after her family fled war
and violence in Afghanistan but growing
up in London
she’s always felt cut off from her roots
I’m not English Afghan I don’t look
Western by still have Asian skin so
where the hell do I belong so for Nell
to find out where she belonged even
though she thought she was Afghan we
took her on a journey to Afghanistan to
see what would it be like to live there
to make that her home what was it like
to be a woman in Afghanistan so I took
her on a journey to visit and meet women
in different walks of life we went to
prisons where women were locked up for
just being with the wrong man for
adultery there were some women who are
in refuges who’d run away from unhappy
homes the worst of it was we met women
in
burns unit in a hospital women who
couldn’t bear being in unhappy marriages
had taken tried to take their own lives
in you know by burning themselves Nell
was exposed to women’s lives in
Afghanistan apart from the women who
were victims or survivors let’s say she
also met incredibly dynamic brave women
who are challenging patriarchy in
Afghanistan who were pushing the
boundaries of what it is to be a woman
they were trying to make changes to
their country but in that journey I
think now who went in there
bombastically thinking that she was
Afghan she suddenly realized that
actually she was really British a lot of
the things that she had taken for
granted came to the fore and she
realized that Britain had made her what
she was today but she left humbled by
these women you know whereas before she
thought oh you know why are you wearing
a hijab you know I wouldn’t get married
to someone that my parents chose for me
but by the end of it she realized that
these women were heroines they were
freedom fighters and she left having
completely transformed as to where she
belonged to see this final clip from her
film the girls there a brave they don’t
have a chance to be anything and you
gave me that oh you so much and I never
ever appreciated it I hope you have got
your answer why we came here because of
your safety apart from the fact that she
realized what her parents had given her
in terms of safety she also recognized
that actually Britain afforded her
opportunities that she wouldn’t have had
if she’d stayed in what she believed was
her home her new home had given her
those opportunities to flourish as a
woman and be dynamic be educated and
become a TV presenter she’s won a very
very successful presenter now with both
Adnan and Nell they inadvertently
discovered what their home was by going
on these journeys you know it will be it
for television but there are so many
people who don’t have that choice and
they’re forced out of their homes they
get moved because of war
disasters and you know in these last few
years we’ve become all too aware with
this mass migration of people from Syria
Afghanistan African countries that
people aren’t safe where they are and
they have to seek new places that they
could call home so I made a film this is
about six seven years ago before the
Syrian crisis a film for panorama called
breaking into Britain we followed two
journeys one from Afghanistan so we
followed F Afghan migrants who are
trying to come to Britain for a safer
life and we also followed African
migrants who are trying to get to
Britain I spent three weeks in both
journeys and along the way we met
extraordinary people who had nothing
they had left behind family they had
left behind everything they knew and
found themselves in very very difficult
adverse situations crossing country
after country looking for some kind of
safe haven we we came across families
who had to make doorways into homes for
their little children three year old
children 1 year old child later on as I
got further down to Patras which is the
place where most the migrants are trying
to get across to Italy so that they can
then have a smooth safe journey through
the rest of Europe because there are no
more rivers and seas to cross and I came
across a bunch of young men who were
trying to get onto the ships that were
going across the migrants call this road
their runway it’s where they hope to
take off for a better life
schway vouchers as whole groups take to
the streets attempting to board the
trucks in plain view of every one way to
come as a the cuckoo deposit is on water
so interesting to see how they were
having to lie to their parents and
pretend that they were having a
fantastic time because if their parents
found out that they were living in
terrible conditions living in Orchard’s
living on the streets they would be
heartbroken
and they would regret ever having sent
their kids off seeking a better life
from the war-torn country they were from
the thing about these kids was that
while we were there they lost their
they’d lost their homes for what they
hadn’t lost was their dignity and their
hospitality when we’re filming with them
they would bring oranges and apples for
us because it’s what they would do in
their home in Afghanistan and they
didn’t forget that they maintained who
they were through just that little thing
of hospitality they didn’t lose their
humanity and it was really touching for
me to experience that there are others
who don’t choose to leave their home at
all at all but are driven out because of
a natural disaster 14 years ago I was in
akshay after the tsunami I went there to
make a film to see what life was like
after people’s lives had been completely
destroyed flattened out people lost
family members they lost everything
that constituted home
but except for a bunch of people who
returned and I want you to see this clip
this is Lompoc in our che province when
the tsunami hit the mosque was the only
thing left
[Music]
before the wave seven thousand people
lived here only a thousand survived
six weeks later just a hundred of
returned they are determined to rebuild
their village and their mosque well the
people of Lombok that mosque was their
spiritual home if they saw it as a sign
and it’s something that brought them
back to that place so it was a location
that they came back to but it was
actually more than that it was about a
feeling it was about a spiritual feeling
of that mosque and no matter what the
difficult situation was they put up
their tents and they started building a
community once again from scratch there
were often children who were adopted by
that other families who’d lost their
children they were men and women who
married each other and it just showed me
that the human instinct to create family
community a home is always there we
never ever lose that no matter what
hardship we go to it was humbling to see
how they built their lives up over the
four or five months that I filmed with
them they were extraordinary they never
gave up hope and it is something that I
think it was there in all those people
that I filmed with they never ever gave
up hope the film that probably had the
most impact on me this was called from
clients Laos and it was made in 2004 a
year after the invasion of Iraq and we
went to film lots and lots of different
conflicts in the world and I was forming
with the Hmong who basically had fought
with the CIA and the Americans during
the Vietnam War
and when the Americans lost and they
left the new government in Laos saw
these people as traitors because they’re
decided with the Americans and these
people fled into the jungles I spent
three days trekking through this
mountainous jungle to find these people
who had been hiding for over 27 years
still persecuted and still at war and
the moment when I walked in is an image
that I will never ever forget is
probably the film that’s had the most
impact in my life because it just showed
how people who are even pushed out of
everything they know there’s somehow
wait
to have some kind of hope in their lives
and to go back to the what they know is
their home we were the first outsiders
that had seen in 20 years they’ve been
waiting to see someone from outside they
just think that we’re the people who are
gonna take back something and tell the
world that it’s just so emotional I
can’t even speak I think I realized on
all my travels and filming with the
amazing people along the way is that we
here are lucky I’ve realized that by a
twist of fate I have ended up living in
Britain in a safe environment I realized
that my life is a continuum and that
continuum has allowed me to flourish as
a person to do the things I want to do
likewise with Adnan and Nell we have
found a home in Britain and right now
there’s lots and lots of people who are
looking for safety and our governments
are turning against those people even
the British people have been hostile
towards some of the refugees and I just
say that having a home is the basic
instinct in all of us nobody’s coming
here to sponge off the system they’re
just looking for safety and most of all
they’re looking for a community to be
part of to make it their home and
contribute to it just the way I have
Nell has an odd Nonna’s and I think
these people need to be given a chance
because I think they would bring a lot
more to our society then people like to
believe thank you
you
live in Britain they’re often asked the
question where are you from I’ve been
asked that plenty of times and it’s led
me to question where am i from what is
home is it a location is it the place
where you were born
is it a town a village a community or is
it just a feeling and I think for me
it’s about belonging and it’s about
identity and it goes even deeper it’s
about who we are as people as an
immigrant myself I have been twice
removed from my origins my father was
born in India and in fact today is a
really special day because it’s the 18th
of November and today my father would
have been 99 if he was still alive so
it’s a very special day for me to be
standing in front talking about my
father so my father was born in India
but at the age of 16 he went to Tanzania
as part of the British colonial service
to work and live out there ten years
later in 1947 at partition his country
India became Pakistan so suddenly he was
technically homeless but actually he
wasn’t because he was in Tanzania his
new adopted home a place where he was
living and working he fell in love with
my mother and in time me and my siblings
were born apart from this crazy haircut
that my mum gave me it was a great place
to grow up and we were happy there my
father’s origins Pakistan was a distant
place my grandparents lived there we
kind of had warm fuzzy feelings about it
and what was that how did that come
about of having some kind of connection
to a land so far away that I’d never
been to I realized that even though I
spoke English in school Swahili in the
streets at home I spoke Urdu and that
was a language that sort of connected me
with a culture that I understood through
my parents and
that language so it’s all sorts of
things that connects us to who we are
and where we belong at the age of 12
we moved once again and I came to live
in England
Coventry the butt of many jokes I was to
discover but actually Coventry was far
from a joke it was the place where I
learned to eat fish and chips in the
newspaper walking in the snow it was
where my neighbors and friends helped me
understand what it was like to be an
English kid to live in an England
English environment and they made us
feel at home to the point that this
became my home England is my home and
it’s allowed me to feel safe enough to
then take on a career that takes me all
over the world as a filmmaker I get sent
to far-flung places and when I get there
I have to immediately find myself a home
I have to kind of familiarize myself
with the language the culture the
nuances and also immerse myself in other
people’s lives
and other people welcomed me into their
lives and into their homes and through
tapping this lifeblood of who they are I
start feeling at home to be able to tell
their stories so I thought what better
way to talk about what home means to
people but through these people who have
met over the years making films about
them one of the most recent films that I
made it was a three-part series for the
BBC called dangerous borders and it was
about partition seventy years on and it
was looking at how the people in India
and Pakistan had formed their lives in
those frontiers what had become of them
so I traveled with a presenter from the
South of Pakistan to the north over a
five-week period my presenter of
non-server his parents are from Pakistan
but he was born in the Netherlands and
has grown up in Burnley of all places as
he Allah says Burnley and he says I say
it wrong but he is from Burnley and he
felt nothing but British
so British that he even joined the
British Army he was willing to die for
his country Pakistan the land of his
ancestors and his parents actually was a
distant thing he pushed it aside why did
he do that because he’s faced racism he
was called a Paki at school he was
beaten up for being a Paki so he just
put that part of his life away at a
distance and didn’t want anything to do
with it he shut it off so then I took
him on this journey and I just like to
show you a clip this is at the end of
the journey after our five weeks of
having travelled over a thousand miles
this is the realization that Adnan came
up – I’m leaving Pakistan with a real
sense of optimism for the future and not
just for this country but for myself as
a British Pakistani this is the end of
my journey here in Pakistan it’s not the
end of my relationship with Pakistan I
feel more of a Pakistani and feel like
it’s more of me and I feel that it’s
just gonna get more and more deeper as I
visit this country more to support me
so after those five weeks by engaging
with people along that journey but non
opened something up in his heart he
opened a door that had been shut in the
house that he knew but didn’t want to
open this gave him a sense of belonging
the familiarity of the smells the tastes
looking like a lot of people around him
but man suddenly discovered a home that
he didn’t know he had that he’d put
aside the next film that I’m going to
talk about is called women weddings war
in me this was a film I made about eight
years ago with a young Afghan girl
called nella waha Pyatt she was born in
Afghanistan and fled Afghanistan because
of war her parents brought her to safety
in England and she grew up in Camden and
for all intents and purposes she is a
Camden girl in every way that you could
imagine and but what what was
interesting is that she actually thought
that she was still very Afghan she
identified with being Afghani and she
just thought that I’m not really English
and I’d like you to see this next clip
this is now she’s 21 in London you could
be whatever the hell you want and I love
what being here has made me now wasn’t
born in Britain she arrived here when
she was six after her family fled war
and violence in Afghanistan but growing
up in London
she’s always felt cut off from her roots
I’m not English Afghan I don’t look
Western by still have Asian skin so
where the hell do I belong so for Nell
to find out where she belonged even
though she thought she was Afghan we
took her on a journey to Afghanistan to
see what would it be like to live there
to make that her home what was it like
to be a woman in Afghanistan so I took
her on a journey to visit and meet women
in different walks of life we went to
prisons where women were locked up for
just being with the wrong man for
adultery there were some women who are
in refuges who’d run away from unhappy
homes the worst of it was we met women
in
burns unit in a hospital women who
couldn’t bear being in unhappy marriages
had taken tried to take their own lives
in you know by burning themselves Nell
was exposed to women’s lives in
Afghanistan apart from the women who
were victims or survivors let’s say she
also met incredibly dynamic brave women
who are challenging patriarchy in
Afghanistan who were pushing the
boundaries of what it is to be a woman
they were trying to make changes to
their country but in that journey I
think now who went in there
bombastically thinking that she was
Afghan she suddenly realized that
actually she was really British a lot of
the things that she had taken for
granted came to the fore and she
realized that Britain had made her what
she was today but she left humbled by
these women you know whereas before she
thought oh you know why are you wearing
a hijab you know I wouldn’t get married
to someone that my parents chose for me
but by the end of it she realized that
these women were heroines they were
freedom fighters and she left having
completely transformed as to where she
belonged to see this final clip from her
film the girls there a brave they don’t
have a chance to be anything and you
gave me that oh you so much and I never
ever appreciated it I hope you have got
your answer why we came here because of
your safety apart from the fact that she
realized what her parents had given her
in terms of safety she also recognized
that actually Britain afforded her
opportunities that she wouldn’t have had
if she’d stayed in what she believed was
her home her new home had given her
those opportunities to flourish as a
woman and be dynamic be educated and
become a TV presenter she’s won a very
very successful presenter now with both
Adnan and Nell they inadvertently
discovered what their home was by going
on these journeys you know it will be it
for television but there are so many
people who don’t have that choice and
they’re forced out of their homes they
get moved because of war
disasters and you know in these last few
years we’ve become all too aware with
this mass migration of people from Syria
Afghanistan African countries that
people aren’t safe where they are and
they have to seek new places that they
could call home so I made a film this is
about six seven years ago before the
Syrian crisis a film for panorama called
breaking into Britain we followed two
journeys one from Afghanistan so we
followed F Afghan migrants who are
trying to come to Britain for a safer
life and we also followed African
migrants who are trying to get to
Britain I spent three weeks in both
journeys and along the way we met
extraordinary people who had nothing
they had left behind family they had
left behind everything they knew and
found themselves in very very difficult
adverse situations crossing country
after country looking for some kind of
safe haven we we came across families
who had to make doorways into homes for
their little children three year old
children 1 year old child later on as I
got further down to Patras which is the
place where most the migrants are trying
to get across to Italy so that they can
then have a smooth safe journey through
the rest of Europe because there are no
more rivers and seas to cross and I came
across a bunch of young men who were
trying to get onto the ships that were
going across the migrants call this road
their runway it’s where they hope to
take off for a better life
schway vouchers as whole groups take to
the streets attempting to board the
trucks in plain view of every one way to
come as a the cuckoo deposit is on water
so interesting to see how they were
having to lie to their parents and
pretend that they were having a
fantastic time because if their parents
found out that they were living in
terrible conditions living in Orchard’s
living on the streets they would be
heartbroken
and they would regret ever having sent
their kids off seeking a better life
from the war-torn country they were from
the thing about these kids was that
while we were there they lost their
they’d lost their homes for what they
hadn’t lost was their dignity and their
hospitality when we’re filming with them
they would bring oranges and apples for
us because it’s what they would do in
their home in Afghanistan and they
didn’t forget that they maintained who
they were through just that little thing
of hospitality they didn’t lose their
humanity and it was really touching for
me to experience that there are others
who don’t choose to leave their home at
all at all but are driven out because of
a natural disaster 14 years ago I was in
akshay after the tsunami I went there to
make a film to see what life was like
after people’s lives had been completely
destroyed flattened out people lost
family members they lost everything
that constituted home
but except for a bunch of people who
returned and I want you to see this clip
this is Lompoc in our che province when
the tsunami hit the mosque was the only
thing left
[Music]
before the wave seven thousand people
lived here only a thousand survived
six weeks later just a hundred of
returned they are determined to rebuild
their village and their mosque well the
people of Lombok that mosque was their
spiritual home if they saw it as a sign
and it’s something that brought them
back to that place so it was a location
that they came back to but it was
actually more than that it was about a
feeling it was about a spiritual feeling
of that mosque and no matter what the
difficult situation was they put up
their tents and they started building a
community once again from scratch there
were often children who were adopted by
that other families who’d lost their
children they were men and women who
married each other and it just showed me
that the human instinct to create family
community a home is always there we
never ever lose that no matter what
hardship we go to it was humbling to see
how they built their lives up over the
four or five months that I filmed with
them they were extraordinary they never
gave up hope and it is something that I
think it was there in all those people
that I filmed with they never ever gave
up hope the film that probably had the
most impact on me this was called from
clients Laos and it was made in 2004 a
year after the invasion of Iraq and we
went to film lots and lots of different
conflicts in the world and I was forming
with the Hmong who basically had fought
with the CIA and the Americans during
the Vietnam War
and when the Americans lost and they
left the new government in Laos saw
these people as traitors because they’re
decided with the Americans and these
people fled into the jungles I spent
three days trekking through this
mountainous jungle to find these people
who had been hiding for over 27 years
still persecuted and still at war and
the moment when I walked in is an image
that I will never ever forget is
probably the film that’s had the most
impact in my life because it just showed
how people who are even pushed out of
everything they know there’s somehow
wait
to have some kind of hope in their lives
and to go back to the what they know is
their home we were the first outsiders
that had seen in 20 years they’ve been
waiting to see someone from outside they
just think that we’re the people who are
gonna take back something and tell the
world that it’s just so emotional I
can’t even speak I think I realized on
all my travels and filming with the
amazing people along the way is that we
here are lucky I’ve realized that by a
twist of fate I have ended up living in
Britain in a safe environment I realized
that my life is a continuum and that
continuum has allowed me to flourish as
a person to do the things I want to do
likewise with Adnan and Nell we have
found a home in Britain and right now
there’s lots and lots of people who are
looking for safety and our governments
are turning against those people even
the British people have been hostile
towards some of the refugees and I just
say that having a home is the basic
instinct in all of us nobody’s coming
here to sponge off the system they’re
just looking for safety and most of all
they’re looking for a community to be
part of to make it their home and
contribute to it just the way I have
Nell has an odd Nonna’s and I think
these people need to be given a chance
because I think they would bring a lot
more to our society then people like to
believe thank you
you
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