New documentary follows refugees in Minnesota as they navigate health care

Courtesy of Chris Newberry, MPR

Minnesota Publc Radio produced a piece about a documentary from filmmaker Chris Newberry examining refugees in the Twin Cities navigating health care over a seven year time frame.

Newberry said he loves creating stories, but some stories are too powerful to be made fiction.  The lives of refugees like Alex are such stories.  Here is a part of Alex’s story;

Then there’s Alex, who, in the early 1980s, fled the violence of his Ethiopian homeland. He walked for two years straight, avoiding flying bullets and packs of hungry hyenas, to reach safety in Sudan.

“Sometimes it’s kind of a dream,” Alex says in the film. “Am I really in the United States? All these years, all this depression and all this medication I’m taking, and I’m still having dreams about the past.”

This documentary also highlights the wonderful men and women who work with refugees and immigrants to help them get the best care possible for their many illnesses (both mental and physical) while respecting their culture.

Newberry did not set out to challenge health care or to champion refugees, he did something much simpler that many recent documentaries shy away from; he just told their story and let his subject speak for itself.  Here is another part of the pice written by MPR;

“This is just a brief window into what the refugee experience is like for some people,” Newberry said. “Hopefully from that, people might be a little more curious, they might have a little bit more respect for refugees, for what they’ve been through and what they go through once they’re resettled.”

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