When I Saw You review – A Refugee Drama

When I Saw You is the second feature from Palestinian film-maker Annemarie Jacir; her warm, supple and heartfelt movie about a child among the refugees displaced into Jordan after the 1967 war suggests a poignant connection between statelessness and the experience of losing a father.

Tarek, 11 (Mahmoud Asfa), and his mother Ghaydaa (Ruba Blal) are in a refugee camp, separated from Tarek's father and hoping against hope that he will one day turn up. They are living in a kind of eternally deferred state in this grim camp: their lives are on hold in emotional exile and it is miserable. Despite, or because of, being smart, Tarek doesn't do well in the makeshift schoolroom – and runs away, finding himself in a guerrilla training camp, where he is taken up as a mascot, and sees a future for himself as a fighter.

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