My Small Land

Emma Kawawada’s first feature is a deeply affecting drama about a young refugee who is searching for her own world while caught between two others. Sarya has lived in Japan since she was five. She pretends to be German to her school friends, which is easier than explaining about her Kurdish parents who travelled from Turkey to Japan as refugees. She cares for her siblings while their father works, and she has a job on the side to bring in extra money. Despite her hardships, she is heading to college, and she develops a tender relationship with a colleague. But her family’s predicament threatens to shatter her dream of a normal life.

I myself have mixed backgrounds. I am always wondering, ‘Where do I belong? Where is my home?’. Especially when I was a teenager, I hesitated to call the place where I live now ‘my country’ and felt out of place. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group without its own country. They have a history of fighting for their own place in the world. What exactly ‘my country’ means? I feel that the existence of these people strongly questions this. Originally, we thought of having Kurds who live in Japan appear as the main characters. However, we could not find a way to have them appear in a film without worrying about their refugee status. In the process of making this film, we learned with devastation that we live in a country where we could not ask people to perform freely.

Director Emma Kawawada