The short film “Shine Again”, the result of a project realised in December 2022 with JRS students in Kenya, promoted by Superottimisti and supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in Kenya, will be presented at the 26th CinemAmbiente Festival in Turin.  

In December 2022, Superottimisti, an Italian association*, held a workshop on film language to JRS students in Nairobi, Kenya thanks to the support of the Italian Cultural Institute in Kenya. During a whole week of hard work, the group of 15 refugee students, all enrolled in a communication course sponsored and provided by Southern New Hampshire University, had the opportunity to experience all the phases of audiovisual production, from the writing of the subject and screenplay to the preparation and realisation of the filming, up to the video editing and finalisation. 

They acted as a real film crew and produced a short film combining Italian archive images with footage shot by the participating students, recounting the life of one of them, the young refugee Rozine, who left Rwanda in search of peace and sought protection in Kenya, where she is accompanied by JRS. 

“The workshop is a great example of the amazing skills, capacities, and inspiration that refugees can give,” says Angelo Pittaluga, JRS Head of Global Advocacy, and former JRS Kenya Country Director. “We thank Archivio Superottimisti and the Italian Cultural Institute for this important initiative and for engaging JRS and the people we serve, confident that Rozine’s journey can inspire more positive stories of refugees’ life beyond displacement.”   

The short film, entitled “Shine Again”, was presented in a cinema in Nairobi and is now being brought to the attention of the Italian public. It will be presented at the 26th CinemAmbiente Festival in Turin, Italy on Saturday, 10 June with JRS students joining online from Kenya. A panel discussion will follow with representatives from Italian Cultural Institute Nairobi, Archivio Superottimisti, JRS, UNHCR, UNICRI. 

For more info, please see the press release .

*Associazione di Promozione Sociale (APS)