Home is a 20-min short focused on themes of war and migration, that looks to bring the refugee crisis one-step closer to your doorstep. Featuring rising star Jack O’Connell, this intimate, thought-provoking short uses its absurd premise of reversing the refugee journey to make its audience deeply consider the plight of the many migrant families, all over the world, looking for a better life.

Synopsis – As thousands of men, women and children attempt to get into Europe, a comfortable English family experience a life-changing journey of their own.

With the short released in UK cinemas nationwide (so unfortunately you’ll have to wait to see it!), Short of the Week spoke to writer & director Mulloy to discover how the opportunity to make Home came about and why he feels it’s an important story to tell at this time:

“When I first went out to Kosovo in 2010 I met a guy named Veton Nurkollari, the director of Dokufest. A few years later Veton asked if I would like to help out by creating some kind of campaign for the festival. I put a week aside to create the campaign and gradually my involvement became an annual thing. In 2015 the Dokufest theme was migration, in part because there were so many people leaving Kosovo because of a dire economic and political situation. I had noticed that as well as the Kosovars leaving, in early 2015 there was also a steady flow of refugees through the Balkans, fleeing war zones such as Syria.

“It needed to be bigger than a no-budget, no-crew campaign shot in a day”

“Arriving back in the UK, after a long time away, there seemed to have been a swing towards xenophobia and the dehumanizing and vilify of both migrants and refugees was happening at the highest levels. I wanted to create a short that would address this trend and that was how the idea for Home came about. I knew though that it needed to be bigger than a no-budget, no-crew film shot in a day, so for Dokufest I ended up making the short piece (below) instead”.

“A guy named Shpend Qamili heard about the Home script, through Dokufest, and started to piece together donations to make it happen. Jack O’Connell connected to the themes and material and in the mean time, a good friend of mine named Afo Kuti started approaching UK production companies. Afo set up relationships with Somesuch and Black Sheep and Home began to gather goodwill and momentum in both Kosovo and the UK”.

“We wanted to create a very human snapshot”

“How we behave under stress is an indicator of who we are as individuals, as communities and as a nation. We know that there is an extreme humanitarian crisis going on. Sixty million people have been forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution – the highest number since the second world war. From here in the UK those sixty million can seem distant. With Home we wanted to create a very human snapshot and show how despite the horror – our greatest strengths of love and connection, often remain”.

Home is being screened to coincide with UNHCR’s #WithRefugees World Refugee Day 2016, to find out more and discover how you can help, visit the short film’s website – www.homefilm.org