Alan in Belfast: Faraway Home – rejuvenating an important part of NI’s wartime history

“I didn’t know that” was a common refrain I could hear around me in the Belfast Odeon’s screen one when the credits rolled at the end of the film and text appeared to explain that 300 of the 10,000 children brought by Kindertransport to the UK had been accommodated by the Belfast Refugee Committee on the Millisle farm.

Marilyn Taylor’s novel has been adapted by screenwriters Stephen Gibson and Clare Sera in Terry Loane’s new film Faraway Home. The Mullers live in Vienna. The father’s bookshop has been targeted by Nazis. Karl (Leo Alonso-Kallscheuer) and his younger sister Rosa (Freyja Doucet) are evacuated, ending up on a farm in Millisle. Conditions are initially spartan but improve as the Ards Peninsula kibbutz continues to welcome more children.

The young cast really impress as they switch languages and locations, bringing a range of emotions and complex reactions to what could have been terribly one-dimensional in another cast or director’s hands.

Alonso-Kallscheuer portrays a protective brother who goes to great lengths to secure his parents a visa to join them in the UK. Doucet gives Rosa an inner steel and neatly picks up a Norn Iron twang as her character’s English improves over the months. Teenage Judy (Doireann McNally) comes up from Dublin to volunteer at the farm: a welcome addition to Karl and Rosa’s circle of friends. Her blessing as Karl briefly leaves the farm (on a side quest that I’ll not spoil) is emotionally charged. Meanwhile Joshua McLees plays local lad Peewee Crawford whose family introduce Northern Ireland’s sectarian tensions into the film and trigger a gentle exploration of othering and shunning the stranger. While there’s limited interaction with the other children, these four musketeers work superbly together on-screen.

The cinematography (Carl Quinn) is sumptuous, capturing the lush rural landscape, the grey city and the brickwork around the docks. Overhead shots track running children through shoreline vegetation. Bombers fly in close formation across the night sky.

The plot’s direction of travel is never unexpected. The children remain very aware of the deteriorating situation back home: with some figures brutally honest about their parent’s likely plight in the forced labour camps that would quickly become concentration camps.

The split of story locations across Vienna, Belfast, the farm and the surrounding community introduces a lot of characters into the story which are generally well defined. The Belfast Blitz is brought forward in time for dramatic purposes to provide a moment of peril to reset Karl’s priorities.

Faraway Home doesn’t sugarcoat the pockets of negative sentiment towards the Jewish refugees nor the distrust across religious divides in Millisle. The character of Granny Crawford (Briege Roche) is allowed to transform from antagonism to tolerance and acceptance. Sacrifices are seen to be made by the Jewish host family on the farm as they keep the youngsters “safe in the land of 1000 welcomes”. Their kindness in the face of adversity mirrors some of the Muller’s neighbours back in Vienna who sustain for the incomeless family.

At a time when antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents are rising in the UK, Faraway Home remembers a time when the British Government welcomed vulnerable refugees into the country, waiving children’s need for visas and setting no limits about acceptable numbers.

Faraway Home is a story that’s led by young actors who deliver spirited performances. The film’s distribution beyond its festival run is still being negotiated. Hopefully it’ll be available for the public – and schools – to screen to keep alive this often-overlooked part of Northern Ireland’s history.

Lots more cinematic gems to come in the Belfast Film Festival which runs until Saturday 7 November.

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!