After Spring film about Jordan’s Zaatari camp is a powerful statement on the refugee crisis

The documentary produced by former host of The Daily Show Jon Stewart and partly funded by a Kickstarter campaign takes a low-key but intimate look at the life of refugees in the camp.

The plight of children at the Zaatari refugee camp is a focus of After Spring, which had its premiere last week in New York. Tribeca Film Festival via AP

With a population of more than 80,000 people, the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan is the largest in the world for Syrians fleeing the civil war.

It is also arguably the most “famous” – well-known visitors who have visited in various official capacities include actor Angelina Jolie, singer Bono and Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani human-rights campaigner.

Thanks to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the camp even has its own Twitter account to help raise awareness of the plight of those living there.

After Spring, a documentary produced by former host of The Daily Show Jon Stewart and partly funded by a Kickstarter campaign, takes a more low-key approach to exploring the life of refugees in the camp.

The film – which had its world premiere last week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York – focuses on the day-to-day rhythms of how the residents have adapted to life in Zaatari, which began as temporary village of tents in July 2012 and is now a city of portacabins. It does a great job of showing how they have built a functioning community despite living in limbo.

Since the inhabitants cannot leave the camp, they do deals with outsiders to supply 3,000 shops on a main stretch dubbed the “Champs Elysee”.

The pizza restaurant, for example, employs five people and delivers orders called in on mobile phones. There are pet shops, an art gallery, a mobile-phone store and a shop that rents wedding dresses.

At the heart of After Spring is the story of two families. One is headed by Mohammed, a father of five, who was among the first to arrive at Zaatari.

The other is that of Abu Ibrahim, a father of two and former construction worker, who helped to install the windows on Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

Among the film’s most poignant scenes, understandably, are the moments when the families talk about their homeland.

Their recollections are accompanied by home videos, as if the country they knew was in the past and is a place they can never visit again.

Ibrahim’s 13-year-old daughter, Raghad, calmly tells how one day she was at school when soldiers started shooting in the playground, before missiles destroyed the building.

When her father is asked what he misses most, he says “my mother”, before bowing his head so the brim of his cap hides his tears.

After Spring was directed by American filmmakers Ellen Martinez, who lived in Dubai for four years when she was growing up, and Steph Ching. They spent three years on the project, including three months inside the camp, with the cooperation of the Jordanian police and the UNHCR.

What the film makes very clear is that, until the civil war in Syria is resolved, the lives of those in Zaatari are on hold – especially those of the children.

Between 10 and 15 babies are born each day in the camp’s small maternity ward – more than 5,000 since the camp opened in July 2012.

Killian Kleinschmidt, the UNHCR camp manager, says in the documentary that 58 per cent of the refugees in Zaatari are children, and he worries they are in danger of becoming a lost generation. And with more than 50 million refugees worldwide, the highest number since the Second World War, it is a powerful warning.

A release date has yet to be announced. For more details, visit www.afterspringfilm.com