The 26th edition of the International Francophone Cinema Festival in Acadie (FICFA) will be held from November 15-23, 2012. One of the movies to be shown at the festival is about a Chechen refugee couple and is titled Welcome Yankee.

According to the festival’s program, “Welcome Yankee” will be presented on November 16 at 9:00pm at Empire Theatres Dieppe’s Salle-1 during the 4th Seance (Crystal Palace Amusement Park, 499 Rue Paul, Dieppe, NB E1A 6S5, Canada).

This short metrage movie’s creator is Canadian director, Benoît Desjardins. The film’s soundtrack is made up of Birlant Ramzaeva, the voice of the Chechen people, and Richard Desjardins.

Welcome Yankee is a story of freedom! Amant and Aslan are persecuted. Their lives and the life of their child are at stake. Isolated from and forgotten by the rest of the world, their pleas for help go unanswered. In search of a better life, they confide their destiny to God and attempt the impossible. On the other side of the Earth flies a beacon of hope, where diversity is welcomed, and the scars of the past fade into comfort and indifference.

“Welcome Yankee is a choral film where three stories intertwine. We follow the journey of a Chechen refugee couple, their arrival at the customs port of Montreal and a young boy. The couple fled from Chechnya, which is a country grappling with a conflict and for this reason, they try to save their lives and their first child’s life with a long journey in a closed container. The woman is pregnant during this period and at the end they arrive in Montreal. In fact, it could be a story from any other country, but I chose Chechnya. This is a film where you will confront a lot of emotion. This is a film that shows the hard realities of their country. They come to Montreal with the hope of a better life. The is a movie about freedom and the sharing of freedom. Here is peace, but there is a war. What have these people done to deserve this? This is a philosophical question that has haunted me for a long time. I believe in this project a lot. From the beginning I worked with Chechens to ensure the film’s authenticity,” said Desjardins.

Here you may see the movie’s trailer:

*Text was written by Waynakh Online and edited by Michael Capobianco