Leila wants to help. In the Geneva training centre of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 30-year-old Iris Leila is being prepared for her first assignment abroad. She is being sent to Liberia, not her desired destination. As a journalist she has reported about the civil war there, she knows the destruction caused by 15 years of terror by warlords, the army and child soldiers. On her birthday Leila arrives at Sanniquellie in the Liberian bush. Here she is supposed to reunite families separated by the war with her local team. Leila likes working with local ICRC field officers. But she also sees the limits of her work: even if the search for missing children is successful, their return home remains problematic – former child soldiers are anything but welcome in their home villages. In the ICRC delegation, Leila learns the difference between being alone and loneliness during an evening curfew, without Internet and mobile phone reception. In spite of the obvious limitations of humanitarian aid, Leila tries to live up to her own expectations of her work.
2007 | Documentary | 93 min. | DCP
Production ICOIN FILM
Co-production Dschoint Ventschr/Zürich
in cooperation with IKRK Internationales Komitee des Roten Kreuzes, Genf
World Premiere Vision du Réel Nyon 2007
Sales Agent Accent Films
Team
Director Luzia Schmid
Script Luzia Schmid, Hajo Schomerus
DoP Hajo Schomerus
Sound Andreas Mücke-Niesytka
Editing Gesa Marten
Music Andres Schilling
Producer Herbert Schwering, Christine Kiauk
Co-producer Karin Koch
Commissioning Editor Christian Cloos, ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel
