Back Home Tomorrow

The Italian aid organisation Emergency offers medical help to civilian casualties in warzones, of whom about one-third are children. In Back Home Tomorrow, directors Fabrizio Lazzaretti and Paolo Antolini use the adventures of two of these children to show the work Emergency does. Yagoub, who fled with his family from Nuba Mountains and now lives in the Mayo Refugee Camp in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, looks jealously at the other kids playing soccer. He has to undergo a drastic heart operation, but neither his family nor his fellow tribesmen can come up with the money to pay for it. The new hospital that Emergency is building couldn't come at a better time. Then there's the Afghani Murtaza. He's recuperating in the hospital in Kabul after losing his left hand in a landmine accident. Murtaza also has to find his way among his fellow patients, who fervently compete with each other in wheelchair races and kite-flying contests. He also must come to grips with the loss of his hand. In a gripping scene, Murtaza and the other little boys tell one another in plain words how they came to lose their limbs. The directors deliver the two stories without commentary and combine them in a poignant manner. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)