The Antechamber of Hell
A Documentary Film by Richard Wolf
Colour
codes:
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Burgundy: Timecode
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Light
Blue: Character Generator/Titles
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Bold
Black: Narration
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Red: Female Voice
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Green: Male
Voice
Images Audio
00:00:05:00
CG:
In
the bosom of winter Music, typewriter sound.
I
discovered within
myself
an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
00:00:18:00
Rice fields Nat
sound, music
00:00:26:00 The
placid rice fields of Myanmar and Bangladesh are silent
witnesses to one of the largest humanitarian
crises of our century.
00:00:40:00 The tranquil
rural landscape was suddenly
Exodus
(drone), burning overwhelmed
by thousands of Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic
minority from Myanmar. They were terrorized by the military. Their
villages were burned.
The men were shot and the women systematically
raped.
00:01:18:00
Raped Woman I was
living together with my husband along with four sons
and one daughter. My husband was a wood cutter. The
Myanmar military came and killed my husband and four sons
by firing on them. After that they decapitated them and
burned the house.
I
and my daughter ran and hid inside a canal. But the military
enclosed us from all sides. They killed all males by firing
and decapitating. Later on, they made a hole and
military dragged the dead bodies into it by holding their legs.
After
that they made fire with sake and petrol oil. They took
my 3-year old baby from me and threw him in the fire.
After throwing him they compelled us to sit down.
Then
they grouped us in five-six people and brought us into a
room. They asked me to give money and gold. They took our money and
gold. They ripped my clothes, made me
naked and raped me in front of my daughter. My
daughter was crying seeing my condition. Seeing her screaming,
they hit her on head.
When
I was wincing they hit me on my head. They broke my hands
and legs and fastened me. They burned the house by bombing.
Most
of my body parts were burned which I can not show you. My
hands and legs have been burned.
I
was weltering inside the house for not tolerating the burning
in my body. My daughter told me that I was burning. After that we plunged into
a pond.
In
the evening we crawled through the rice fields to the jungle
and were there for four days without food.
I
had no clothes on my body.
00:03:33:00
Refugees
walking (drone) A
mass exodus of over one million people ensued. Most were farmers
living in small rural villages. In
Man in forest deep shock and
fleeing with almost no possessions, they made a
perilous journey on foot to Bangladesh.
00:04:08:00
Military
beating people Natural sound
CG:
Meanwhile in Myanmar...
00:04:43:00
Man The
Myanmar military beat nearly fifty people in my village
with iron sticks. They did not care who is whose father,
who is whose brother. They beat everyone regardless of
anything. They brought me and my two brothers
into a room and asked us to tell the truth if we have any
arms. We told them that we live by hard work and why we
should have arms. They said we were lying and
then around fifteen soldiers kicked us with boots.
After
twenty minutes I was senseless and could not tell
CG:
Satellite images of burned anything.
After that they hit us with knives and
tried to Rohingya villages cut
down our body parts. They beat the three of us and imprisoned
others in a state of half-dead. Among them some
were dead and some were alive.
00:05:37:00
Man cont. After
that the local chairman told the soldiers to let us go for the
night and he would hand over all of us to them
for killing
the next day. That night we fled
away to Bangladesh with
all the people of our area.
00:06:03:00 Forest The
virgin forest in Kutupalong was decimated to become the largest
refugee camp in the world.
00:06:20:00 GVs camp, huts Here one million people live crammed in improvised windowless huts and endure
temperatures of 45 degrees Celsius and humidity over 90
percent. Drenching in sweat, they survive
mostly on meager humanitarian aid and don't know if and
when they will
be able to return home.
00:06:44:00 Kutupalong is
the antechamber of hell, a cauldron of deeply
distressed people with no future perspectives.
Plant on top
of tent Can
hope survive the trauma?
00:07:26:00 Teenager I
didn't know that the war had begun. I woke up in the morning
and saw that our neighbours' houses were burning. I saw the military entering our area.
We tried to flee away through the rice field. They fired
on us from the back. They
shot me on the shoulder.
00:07:57:00
Pregnant woman raped I was in my house and three soldiers came. They tortured and raped me. I had given birth to a
child the day before
I was raped. I did not know where my husband and children went.
They tortured me a lot
so my uterus came out.
They
tortured me a lot and after being raped by three people another
three military tortured me. I was confused whether to think
about my child or about me. After coming here without my husband I am
getting food items once a month. I am living
by eating this. I am suffering a lot. I can not hold a pitcher
nor can cough because of physical problem. I am living
with my child and nephew.
They
tortured me a lot and pushed me with bayonet so that I can
not live normal life. I have sot on my legs and other parts. I am facing difficulty in eating
and drinking.
I
feel pain in my body. I am facing problem raising my child and
I also don’t have a husband.
00:09:17:00 Huts Lingering day after day in their
minuscule huts under the
oppressive heat, the refugees are torn between depression and anger.
00:09:33:00
Raped woman (suicide) After
being raped, I wished to kill myself. I also felt very ashamed
and did not want to show my face to anyone. I wished to
enter inside the earth.
00:09:48:00
Man with one
leg I can not go on because I have only one leg. What did we do to
them? I did not do anything but
they butchered us. They displaced us. If we get them, we
will do the same.
00:10:04:00
Woman raped
revenge I want to kill the military. I want to do everything to them exactly how they did with us. I also want
to kill them that way.
00:10:22:00 Man poison My only wish is that we regain
our dignity and citizenship. After
that we will go back to Myanmar. If the world cannot make
this happen, it is better for us
to drink poison and die here.
00:10:35:00 Woman raped tent I
have no belief in love and life.
00:10:39:00 Woman
burned What kind of dream can I have? I
have nothing left.
00:10:46:00 Ambulance The
physical and psychological pain runs deep among the refugees. This man was rushed to
the hospital because of excruciating pain
due to the injuries he suffered from the Myanmar military.
00:11:08:00 Interview
doctor As a doctor I have one motive which is
to stand beside the sick people and to heal
them with good treatment. This is my objective. I believe man is for man.
There is no difference to a doctor
which country, which
nation or religion a patient has. We are working with a vision to
treat sick people.
00:11:47:00
Surgeons Surgeons
are scarce in the camp. A few choose to donate their time to provide
a much needed lifeline to the refugees.
00:12:03:00
Interview surgeon (no voiceover) This is my social
responsibility. I treat these patients out of CG subtitles (his English is bad) humanity. These are
socially rewarding surgeries. Today I do the
cleft surgeries. The patients are suffering with cleft lip and cleft palate. This is a socially,
physically and mentally disabling
condition.
After the operation
there is a miracle of change. They can smile well. The Nobel laureate Mother
Theresa said "Peace begins with a smile". That's
why I do these surgeries.
00:12:51:00 Baby delivery
Field hospitals
are scarce and patients continue to arrive. A mother in a feeble state about to give
birth arrives by rickshaw at one of the few
women hospitals in the
camp. The midwives take her quickly to the delivery room. The wait is not
long. Soon a beautiful baby is born.
00:13:47:00 Midwife When I see a newly born child, I go
back to my past life when I
was born. I feel a lot of joy by seeing this baby. It touches my heart. I feel my mother very
much that time. When I see a mother with her child, I also become
delighted.
00:14:14:00 But the joy of
the midwives is not always shared by the mothers. Children
here are often unwanted either due to economic hardship or because they are
the off spring of rape.
00:14:30:00
Raped woman who gave birth Before they raped me I had menstruation but later on I did not have menstruation. Also in the meantime I did not meet with
my husband. My husband told me that I have not met with
you but you were raped
by military. So
the baby inside you
is not my baby.
My
daughter told her father about the occurrence. Then my husband
didn’t want to receive me
and wanted to divorce me. I could not bear the torture of my husband and I went to hospital for abortion. The nurse
asked me how many children do
I have and I told her I have two children. Then she told me to
keep the baby. I told her that one of my children is three years old and another one is five
years old.
Then
we went to another hospital and they gave us medicine for
abortion.
I
also used amulets but the child has not been aborted. After
that my husband did not talk with me for 6 months.
He
did not come to house. If he came, he just talked with my other
two children and after that we went out.
After
six months he started to talk with me and started to come
to the house. When I
gave birth he did nothing and my neighbors brought a midwife. After
that the child was born. After child birth my husband did
not feed me well. He did not buy
any food and did not let anyone buy food for me.
00:16:28:00
Interview
Dr. Mahmood (in
English, no need to voiceover)
No
one wants to leave their country to live this life that they are
living. They have been forced to come here. They do not feel dignified. They do not feel respected. They feel
that their rights
to education, rights to citizenship, the right to a normal livelihood
have been taken away. So they are living in a very very bad
condition. I feel they should receive support from us so they
feel like human beings, they feel their dignity, they feel
they can claim their dignity back, their honor back and hopefully
they can go back to their homeland where they came
from and start their lives back again.
00:17:19:00 Camp Images Music
00:18:06:00 Shop The precarious situation of the refugees often forces them to take painful pragmatic decisions
to survive. After discussing the matter with his wife,
Ziabur decided to sell
her gold and jewelry in order to raise capital to open a shop in the camp, so that
with the income of the business
he can feed his family. Resilience
comes at a price.
00:18:37:00
Interview shop keeper I sell snacks in my shop. I also
sell betel leaf. In the morning I bring items by
car and in the evening I pay the
money. I don’t have that much profit in my shop. I
give the profit to the wholesaler and they give a portion
to me. Wholesalers give me product and I pay them
after selling.
We
can eat half a pound of fish per day with the income
of this shop. I earn about eight dollars a day.
00:19:11:00 Boys in market Natural sound.
00:19:24:00 Ice cream boy Refugee children are also savvy to spot
opportunities to earn some money.
Saidul sells ice cream, which is avidly sought after by the neighborhood kids.
00:19:35:00 Kite flying Meanwhile, kite flying remains
the preferred leisure activity in the
camp.
00:19:46:00 Water well Water
wells are in high demand both to fetch water and for
an improvised shower.
00:20:09:00 Teacher, school Temperatures inside the refugee huts reach forty eight degrees Celsius. But this
does not deter Fatteen from preparing the daily lessons for his
pupils. Taught by his father
in Myanmar, he decided to open an improvised school
to give the refugee kids a future. Every day he teaches 240
students. The school, simple and with no chairs,
is also a safe haven for children, where they can transcend their
sorrows and build hope for the future.
00:21:23:00 Interview teacher My
father was the imam of a mosque. The Myanmar military killed
him inside the mosque while
he was praying. Everybody here knows about that. They killed many people in
prayer like my father. They
did not let us
perform prayer, and
we were not able to
maintain our own religion.
00:22:14:00 Interview teacher Education
is a very important part of human life. No one can survive
without education. People can not know even themselves without education. God
helped us to be educated
and my parents raised
me and gave
me education. I
want to teach these children
as my parents
taught me. As a result
they can go forward
in life. I wish
they will also teach their children like I am teaching
them.
00:22:59:00 An
educated person can identify which way is right or wrong. But
an uneducated person can not identify right or wrong. By
studying people can go beyond. They can do many things after taking education. So that's why I chose the teaching profession.
00:23:22:00 Children smiling Nietzsche said: "that which does not kill us makes us stronger."
Extraordinarily resilient, the Rohingya refugees dare to engage in the most
formidable of the
human endeavours: to dream.
00:23:39:00 Interview
teacher A person can not live without a dream. If I lose something, it always comes to my mind. Because it was my
own thing.
So
I hope my country will
always remain in my heart.
00:23:57:00
Drawing, forest, song Man
sings song.
CG: Rohingya love song
00:24:53:00 CG: Credits
The Antechamber of Hell
A Film by
Richard Wolf
Music:
Adrian Snell
Narration
Edna Fernandes
Voices
Kimberley Ellis
Matthew Cleverly
Director of Photography
Richard Wolf
Local Producers
Muhibul Islam Misba
Afrin Sultana Juli
Thanks to
All Rohingya people who shared their stories
Dr. Iftikher Mahmood
Hope Foundation
Filmed on Location at Kutupalong, Bangladesh
Sony A7iii & DJI Osmo cameras
Filmed only with existing light
Edited on Final Cut Pro X
Lobodocs
www.lobodocs.com