Midnight Traveler
In a rare first-person account of the refugee experience, an Afghan family fleeing the Taliban film their years-long journey to safety.
Awards & Recognition
Winner
2019 Sundance Film Festival - World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for No Borders
Winner
2019 Peabody Awards - George Foster Peabody Award
Winner
2019 News and Documentary Emmy Awards - Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary
The refugee’s story is most often told by others — journalists, NGO workers, and other outsiders who strive to faithfully convey traumatic experiences far removed from their own. When assassins target Afghan documentarian Hassan Fazili in 2015 after he makes a film about Taliban fighters who have laid down arms, he must flee with his family. At the mercy of political winds, local police, extortionate smugglers, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, they try to control their situation — and its narrative — through the only means available: the recording button on their phones. Midnight Traveler traces the Fazili family’s years-long, unpredictable journey out of Afghanistan and westward along one of Europe’s most notorious smuggling routes, with stops in refugee camps in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary. Along the way, Hassan, wife Fatima, and their two young daughters document their interactions with other refugees, smugglers, and police, collecting diverse perspectives on the refugee experience. Life in the camps puts a strain on the family, leading Hassan to weigh his political ideals against the risks and losses they’ve endured. Yet the uneasy ritual of “capturing beautiful images of [his] own children suffering” spins a lifeline to his past as a humanitarian and intellectual.