NEVER LEAVE ME

Isa has lost his mother. He is picked up by a social worker and taken to an orphanage immediately after the funeral service. He skips school and roams the streets of the southern Turkish city of Sanliurfa. He wants to get out of the home as soon as possible and encourages other young refugees to beg. They are all suffering from their war traumas and each one of them has their dreams: the girl Tukka wants to buy an expensive pigeon like the one she had at home in Syria, little Muatez longs to take part in a children's singing competition in Adana.

Of the almost 5 million Syrian refugees, more than half are children, and 600,000 of these have lost both of their parents in the war. Begić presents a very sensitive portrayal of the interaction between the Syrian children and their contacts to the Turkish population. This sees her returning again to the poetic realism of her debut film SNOW. WMH