Home Again
Logline
Paabi is deported from Libya on his second attempt to get to Europe by the back way. Determined to use the €1000 reintegration grant to build a life in the Gambia and not need to try and migrate again, he is faced with obstacles. Will succeed or give up like many youth who are eventually forced to leave?
Synopsis
This film looks at reintegration systems for returning migrants through a portrait of 23-year-old Paabi who returns after his second failed attempt. After the first attempt, Paabi lost all his reintegration funds when his wealthy uncle misused it in a timber business. Angered and frustrated, he attempted another journey only to be deported again. He is back now and committed to never go back on the dangerous journey, but making it in the Gambia is much more difficult than it was before. IOM has changed its policies to make it more difficult for migrants to access their reintegration packages in cash. This is to ensure migrants don’t use the 1000 euros reintegration money to fund other attempts to go to Europe. But Paabi is using his experience from his first reintegration program to cheat the IOM system. He wants to get his money in cash to invest it in his own business.
Director
Babucarr Manka
Babucarr Manka is the creative director of the Gambia’s leading audio-visual company, State Of Mic Multimedia. Since he started filmmaking in 2009, he has produced and directed numerous documentaries, TV shows and commercials. His early filmmaking journey started with providing audiovisual services for most of the international organisations in the Gambia. Since 2017, he has developed a keen interest into producing films in his quest to find deeper ways to understand ordinary people and everyday stories. He wrote and co-directed his first short film Gifts from Babylon, which is still the most recognized Gambian film in the international community. To date the film has been selected for more than ninety film festivals and won more than 25 awards.
Producers
Alhagie Manka
STATE OF MIC
Alhagie Manka is a producer, director, photographer, award-winning cinematographer and creative facilitator with vast experience in filming and photography in the Gambia, but also in other countries in Africa, the Middle East, North America and Europe. He works in a diverse range of documentary projects, television shows, local and international concerts, corporate videos, international news features, award-winning short and feature films. His company State of Mic Multimedia is a functioning and inspiring platform for young Gambian creative entrepreneurs.
Don Edkins
STEPS
Don Edkins is a South African documentary filmmaker and producer based in Cape
Town. He has produced documentary film projects that have been broadcast around
the world, such as Steps for the Future, Why Democracy? and Why Poverty? earning
multiple international awards, including an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and the
Special Teddy Award at the 63rd Berlinale for Steps for the Future. The Peabody
awarded Why Poverty? Project, with documentary films from 21 countries, was
screened globally by 70 broadcasters. He is Executive Producer of AfriDocs, a free-to-
view VOD platform and broadcast strand across Africa that screens the best African
and international documentary films. He is currently producing a new documentary film
project with African filmmakers across the continent, Generation Africa, around the
theme of migration. He is a mentor for the Berlinale Talents, Durban FilmMart, and
Docs by the Sea in Indonesia, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Tiny Mungwe
STEPS
Tiny Mungwe is a documentary film and arts producer. She currently works at STEPS
(Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects) where she produces Generation
Africa, a pan-African anthology of 25 documentary films from 16 countries in Africa, on
the topic of migration. Mungwe’s films include Akekho uGogo, a 48 minute
documentary about urban youth culture, which screened at several festivals including
the Durban International Film Festival, Apollo Film Festival and DOKANEMA Festival.
Her short film script Evelyn was selected for the National Film and Video Foundation
(NFVF) Women Filmmaker Project and she directed another short film in the program,
Daddy’s Boy. She has written for some of the highest rating South African television
dramas such as Muvhango and Matatiele, and was one of the directors on the series
Uzalo. For several years she worked as a festival organizer and programmer for four
international festivals, namely Time of the Writer, the Durban International Film
Festival, Jomba! Contemporary Dance Festival and Poetry Africa. During that time she also worked on the program for Durban FilmMart (the co-production market of the festival) and Talents Durban (a career development program for emerging African filmmakers in partnership with Berlinale Talents). She continues to work as a program curation associate for the Durban FilmMart. She also programmed and curated the city of Durban’s inaugural book and art fair, ARTiculate Africa.
