Manus Island detention movie shot in secret

Port Moresby: A documentary filmed in secret on a mobile phone will soon give movie goers a glimpse inside Australia’s refugee detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Chauka, please tell us the time

was shot by the Kurdish journalist and Manus Island detainee, Behrouz Boochani.

Interned on the island for almost four years as part of Australia’s policy of processing asylum-seekers abroad, Mr Boochani is a refugee from Iran and the film’s co-director.

“Chauka is actually a movie against the racists and it is not only about the refugees,” he said.

“It’s about Manusian people too and how Australia use them, use local people and use this island against the refugees.”

Over six months, Mr Boochani filmed the 88-minute movie on his cell phone, sending the shots to his co-director in the Netherlands, Arash Kamali Sarvestani.

“He sent one by one. It took long time,” said Mr Sarvestani. “Sometimes for one 30 second shot it takes half a day. It depends on the internet.” Eventually, Mr Boochani was able to smuggle his footage to Amsterdam on a USB drive.

“It is a documentary film, but in some ways it is artistic work,” he said.

The movie was named after a bird endemic to Manus Island.

But Chauka is not just the name of a bird. It was also the name given to the detention centre’s notorious solitary confinement jail.