The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) counts about 33 million refugees in the world today. There is an even larger multitude saddled with the chillingly bureaucratic title "internally displaced persons."
Shocking as those numbers should be, they provide little insight into the heart of the issue. What is a refugee exactly? What does it mean to live as a refugee? What of the pain and sadness, the hopes and dreams of these many millions of human beings?
In the hopes of addressing some of those questions for Japanese audiences, the UNHCR launched the second annual Refugee Film Festival at venues throughout Tokyo on July 18. "The idea is to bring the humanity and experiences of people who are forced to leave their homes to life for audiences," says the event's founder and current head Kirill Konin. "How many people are touched when they hear on the news that another 100,000 people from Sudan crossed the border to Chad? Films on the other hand really touch and change people's hearts."