Name Me Lawand

This documentary is based around Lawand (Lawand Hamad Amin), a boy who has been deaf since birth, exploring Lawand’s efforts to find a place with people who are like him and who can understand him. It details his dangerous journey as a refugee as his family travels from Iraq to Derbyshire, England. Although he finds comfort in the Royal School for the Deaf, when everything starts to settle his family face the threat of deportation. What results is him and his family teaming up with the local community members to fight for their new home. Exploring themes of isolation and immigration, this film covers a wide series of issues in a heartfelt and deep manner despite its short runtime, truly showing the skills of director and writer Edward Lovelace. He is not content with just telling the story, but showing it as well, using frantic flashbacks and at times fast-paced camera movement to communicate Lawand’s frantic thoughts and feelings. This film further humanises an issue that is frequently dehumanised by sensationalist media, that being immigration and deportation. At a time when this is such a closely contested subject, this film truly represents the individuals impacted by these policies and highlights how truly harmful these decisions are to actual people. It is important to always keep in mind the human impact of your actions, and this film so perfectly reminds us of what the human impact is of tough immigration and deportation policies. This shows what in my view is a key point of the film and the exceptional skill of filmmaker Edward Lovelace, who represents Lawand and his family in such a genuine manner and gives proper respect to the issues and lives he is representing. This results in an honest and informative film that I truly feel like everyone must see

James Patt