BETWEEN - In Development

Relationships are hard enough without interference from the Home Office

Between is the feature film script written by Abel Osman and Catherine Donaldson. The script is a collaboration between Abel’s experience as an asylum seeker from Eritrea and mine as a filmmaker/teacher. Developed over five years, Between is an intimate insight into what it means to seek asylum in the UK.

Between is the story of PETROS (25), an asylum seeker who is sent to the seaside town of Hastings to wait for his appeal. The Home Office dictates how he can live. He receives a pittance in support, is not allowed to work and knows little about how his case will be decided. He no longer feels like a man. Then Petros meets ANNA (22), a British university student in her final year, and things seem like they will change. Petros and Anna start to fall in love, despite warnings from friends and family that this relationship cannot work. But very quickly his uncertain status becomes an obstacle. When the Home Office rejects his appeal, Petros pushes Anna away. It is the beginning of a downhill spiral.  A technicality means Petros can appeal again. Hope flares. Anna agrees to give him another chance, but Petros must learn to live in the present rather than for a future that may never come..

Between is a political romance that challenges how the UK treats asylum seekers. It takes its influences from Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder: 1974) and Shall We Dance (Misayuko Suo:1996). It has a touch of Dheepan (Audriard:2015.)  As populism and insecurity continue to spiral in the UK, this film follows the journey of one asylum seekers as he negotiates this increasingly hostile environment. This is an important film as Home Office policies toward migrants and those seeking asylum have implications for wider society. Asylum seekers and migrants coming to the UK by non-sanctioned routes are now the acceptable targets prejudice and discrimination.  The danger of these policies is that what can be done to asylum seekers could eventually limit the human rights of all of us.

We have a completed script, a budget a proof-of-concept film and some funding. We are currently looking to complete the funding.