Batoor
هزارگی

My Refugee Journey

Across one sleepless night, Hazara photojournalist Barat Ali Batoor confronts the ghosts, trauma and unanswered questions contained in the hard drive that documents his perilous journey seeking asylum.

From the reel for My Refugee Journey, 360 Degree Films. On a wide screen the film moves as you scroll, and stops when you do.

Tell me when it screensSupport the filmFeature documentary, 85 minutes, in the edit

Sizzle reel, 2 minutes 36 seconds. 360 Degree Films. The impact budget includes a line for a screening trailer.

For Barat Ali Batoor, a camera has always been his voice, his act of resistance and a passport to the world. As the first Hazara photojournalist, he covered news and humanitarian issues in Afghanistan after 9/11. When he exposed human rights abuses, everything he had worked for was put at risk. The images sparked international uproar and death threats forced him to flee.

My Refugee Journey is a story of survival told through Batoor's own photographs and video. He crosses borders and oceans, survives a shipwreck and escapes an Indonesian detention centre, turning the camera on himself to capture a first-person record of life chasing asylum, and the price of telling the truth.

Today Batoor is settled in Melbourne. Yet even here the shadows of racism are rising, as the national conversation increasingly targets immigrants like him.

Previously In Focus and I Am Hazara. Synopsis as published by 360 Degree Films.

A man in a hooded top watches a small wooden boat cross a wide brown river at the Thailand to Malaysia border, 2012.
Asylum seekers sitting on the floor of a bare room in Kuala Lumpur, palms turned upward in prayer, 2012.
Men resting on a mat in a dark timber house in Sumatra, banknotes on the floor between them, 2012.
A man tries on a yellow life jacket in a crowded room while another adjusts the straps, Indonesia, 2012.

His own photographs from the passage, 2012. The film is built from these and the video he shot beside them.

The film is cut from these.

He photographed and filmed the whole way, on a camera he kept when he had almost nothing else. That hard drive is what the edit is working from now.

A man in a hooded top watches a small wooden boat cross a wide brown river at the Thailand to Malaysia border, 2012.

It was a desperate decision to leave everything behind. © Barat Ali Batoor, September 2012.

Where it is up to

Updates as the producer publishes them. Last checked 9 September 2026.

  1. January 2025Selected for the AIDC FACTory international pitching showcase as In Focus.
  2. March 2025Wins the dokleipzig Prize at AIDC.
  3. July 2025360 Degree Films comes on board. The project becomes I Am Hazara.
  4. December 2025Retitled My Refugee Journey. Support from the MIFF Premiere Fund and VicScreen announced.
  5. February 2026Impact campaign fundraiser in Collingwood, in conversation with Zoe Daniel, moderated by Kon Karapanagiotidis.
  6. June 2026Two filming blocks complete. Kasimir Burgess joins as co-director. The edit begins.
  7. March 2027Scheduled completion.

Four ways in.

  1. Tell me when it screens

    The plan the producer has published is a festival premiere, then a national cinema release through Bonsai Films, then community and school screenings. No dates are set. Tell us your city and you hear when they are.

    Tell me when

  2. Host a screening

    For community organisations, councils, universities, workplaces and festivals. The impact plan names Rural Australians for Refugees as a national screening partner. Send the venue, the audience and the time of year, and it reaches the producer.

    Request a screening

  3. For educators

    Classroom resources for years 7 to 11 are in development with Cool.org, funded in part by the Scanlon Foundation. Nothing is published yet. Register interest and your school hears when it is.

    Register a school

  4. Press kit

    Logline, synopsis, the credit block, stills from his own archive and the biography, in one place. Interview requests go through the same form.

    Press page

The reel for My Refugee Journey, 360 Degree Films, plays behind this without sound.

Two funds, two jobs.

One fund was for finishing the film, and it has passed its goal. The other carries the film into classrooms and communities, and is still open. Both are run by partners, not by this site.

Financed by VicScreen, Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund, Shark Island Foundation, Scanlon Foundation, Blue Post and private donors.

Documentary Australia

$87,070 of $60,000

Completion of the film. Tax-deductible in Australia.

Past its goal and closed, as of 15 Oct 2026, 27 supportersSee the campaign

GiveNow, with Cool.org

$85,855 of $120,000

Impact campaign and classroom resources for years 7 to 11.

71%, as of 15 Oct 2026Give

Credits

Directors
Kasimir Burgess and Barat Ali Batoor
Producer
Sally Ingleton, 360 Degree Films
Executive producer
Shaun Miller
Editor
Steven Robinson ASE
Cinematographer
Benjamin Bryan
Composer
Luke Altmann
Distributor, Australia and New Zealand
Bonsai Films

Impact partners: Rural Australians for Refugees, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Asia Pacific Network, Cool.org.

Stay close to the work

One email when something matters: a screening, an exhibition, a talk. Choose what you want to hear about, and in which language.

I want to hear about
Preferred language
No newsletters more than twice a month. Unsubscribe in one click.