The involuntary displacement of more than 80 million people in all corners of the earth—a number that could increase by at least a third in the next ten years-- is an unfolding tragedy that will, depending on our response, help define what kind of world we share with our fellow human beings in the 21st century, and what kind of global civilization we become.

 

Much is at stake. At present, thousands of children, women, and men are being forced from their homes every day by armed conflict; violence in many forms; ethnic and religious prejudice; political oppression; poor governance; economic mismanagement; natural disasters; and land, crop and water failures induced by global warming.

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Oh Mercy is the first of four films in Running To Stand Still, a series of documentaries about the epic migration of tens of millions of children, women, and men around the world who have been displaced from their homes by forces beyond their control, and serves as an introductory piece to the series segment on the US/Mexico border crisis. The second film in the series, Heart of the Matter, will address the issues of marginalization, dehumanization, and systematic exclusion, in more depth than Oh Mercy. The film focuses on how family units become fractured—sometimes irreparably—during the forced migration experience, and how the dangers and uncertainties of the migratory journey impacts children, especially.

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The third film in the series, Waiting For Home, is about the nearly one million Rohingya now living in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, in the largest refugee camp in human history, following their expulsion from Myanmar on August 25, 2017 by the government of Nobel Laureate Aung Soo Kyi. The fourth film in the series, Across The Water, is about the ongoing immigration crisis in the Mediterranean, where thousands of displaced people including Syrians, Afghans, and Africans from failed or failing states are seeking asylum on a European continent that is proving as unwelcoming to refugees and asylum seekers as its North American counterpart.

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