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Taking place at the fabulous Silver Screen Cinema, the Opening Night Party starts at 6pm with global music from DJ Local Foreigner, and is free to Festival Pass holders (don’t forget to book your place!) and Thursday night ticket holders.
Starting at 7:30pm, The Walk is based on an extraordinary artistic endeavour in 2021 which saw a 12 foot tall puppet called Amal travel for three months across Europe, raising awareness of the plight of unaccompanied young refugees. The film follows the journey of Amal, from the Syrian border, all the way across Europe, as she searches for safety and a place where she feels welcome.
In October 2021, she memorably came to Folkestone, and we’re delighted to be hosting the UK Premiere of this new film about her.
In the film, Amal is a real girl with a real voice (an inner monologue narrated by a Syrian refugee), which expresses the hopes and fears that a young girl would feel on this journey. Just like any human, she struggles with a diversity of emotions. She has her thoughts, memories, dreams and fears that we witness along her journey. She meets lots of other refugees like her, all on their own journeys, and she also meets plenty of people who don’t want her in their country.
THE WALK is not a typical documentary. It mixes vérité documentary with fantastical semi-scripted elements to create a fairytale for adults.
Stay after the film for a live in-person Q&A.
Screening in partnership with Together Films.
Directed by
Tamara Kotevska
Genre
Documentary
Country
UK
Year
2023
Duration
80 mins
Rating
PG
THE WALK follows the journey of Amal, a 12 foot giant puppet. Amal is a young refugee girl who is travelling from the Syrian border in Turkey, all the way across Europe, trying to find a home. The film mixes vérité documentary with fantastical semi-scripted elements to create a fairy-tale for adults.
Tamara Kotevska is the Oscar®-nominated director of HONEYLAND, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury Prize and Special Jury Award for Impact for Change. It also went on to become the first documentary to ever receive Academy Award® nominations for both Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature. THE WALK is her follow-up feature.
![](https://folkestonecinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/the-walk-still2-1024x576.avif")
Directed by
Anna Snowball
Genre
Documentary
Country
UK
Year
2024
Duration
12 mins
Rating
PG
Dotted across London, Iranian-owned shops, exchange offices and restaurants house newspaper stands stacked with colourful Farsi-language publications. Tucked within their pages are intriguing free ads called the ‘Iranian Yellow Pages’. We discover the people behind these adverts; OAPs partying at a lunch club, a lady washing cars, a puppeteer doing shows in the library, many lonely hearts, and a refugee delivery driver who dreams of launching a catering business in order for his wife and son to join him in London. They all want the same thing; to find connections in the lonely city they now call home and reconnection to the complicated country they’ve left behind.
![](https://folkestonecinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/iranian-yellow-pages-still-jpg.avif")
For more details about the films and the festival, visit the Folkestone Documentary Festival website:
