Published 16 November 2021 at 11.15
Media. The award-winning SVT documentary “Aboli's journey” is based, by all accounts, on a fictional course of events, reveals Kvartal. In addition, the state television giant denies that the main character, a “refugee child”, is lying about his age and that he applied for asylum in Sweden with two different identities.
– Documentary filmmakers do not have to be objective, says the film's producer.
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The SVT documentary “Aboli's journey” was named the best Nordic documentary at the Nordic Panorama film festival in September. In the film, you get to follow a poor unaccompanied refugee child and his tribulations after being deported from Sweden in 2018.
Abolfazl, who in the documentary is alleged to have been 17 years old when he came to Sweden, is portrayed when he tries to find an opportunity to prove his identity so that he can apply for a work permit in Sweden and go back to the country. To this end, he embarks on a life-threatening journey through Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. In the end, he succeeds in his intention and can return to Sweden after getting a job at a shopping center in western Sweden.
The problem? The course of events seems to be fictional, Kvartal states in his review.
The whole film is based on Abolfazl carrying out the dangerous journey to get hold of a simpler Afghan ID document, a so-called “tazkira”. But the tazkira he receives refers to a different identity than the one that later appears on the passport he is issued.
From the tazkiran, which is shown in the documentary, it appears that he is then 21 years old. Later in the film, he gets his passport, and it appears that he is 25 years old instead. It is with the latter new identity that he now lives in Sweden.
According to this new official identity, Abolfazl was 21 years old when he first applied for asylum in Sweden, and not 17 as SVT claims.
“It is therefore unlikely that the tazkira that he struggles to get throughout the film, may have been the basis for the passport that later gives him a residence permit. If the dangerous journey in the film was really made, it probably still did not contribute to him got his passport “, writes Kvartal.
The film also obscures that Abolfazl had already applied for asylum in another EU country before he first came to Sweden, and that he then stated a higher age than he did in his Swedish asylum application.
SVT Play's description of the film further states that Abolfazl had never been to Afghanistan before. This despite the fact that he told the Swedish Migration Agency that he lived in the country until he was five years old, states Kvartal.
The film's director, Yasaman Sharifmanesh, has great difficulty explaining his behavior. However, he admits for the quarter that he “knows all the details” that the newspaper reports.
– I do not have permission to tell everything, says Yasaman Sharifmanesh to Kvartal.
The film's producer, Antonio Russo Merenda at the production company Ginestra film, defends herself by saying that “documentary filmmakers do not have to be objective”.
– A documentary is a personal portrayal, it is her perception of reality. News journalism has nothing to do with documentaries. We have completely different methods, we establish relationships that are very long-lasting with our characters, he says to Kvartal.
The film's project manager at SVT, Lars Säfström, says that he does not see any problems with the documentary.
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