A Critical Analysis of Displacement and Human Rights Violations in Films

This paper aims to meta-synthesize films for future research on displacement and exposure to human rights violations in cinema. With a purposive sample of eleven films, the focus was on basic human rights violations and impoverishment caused by war-related displacement. The article provided spatial diversity through the thematization, and meta-synthesis of films produced on the topic in different countries. In the selected films, displaced people were often traumatized by material and emotional poverty and human rights violations. However, in most countries of migration, discourses on refugees have been developed with the claim that they cause unemployment and cheap labour. Therefore, the research explored not only the humanitarian injustices suffered by refugees but also whether the voices of non-refugee groups experiencing poverty and unemployment are heard. According to the findings, these films often focused on displaced people, with insufficient dialogue with local people, especially those living in poverty. In an assessment, it was observed that the selected films generally lacked a solidarity ground for refugee and non-refugee vulnerable social groups who are directly and indirectly subjected to human rights violations as a result of fleeing war.