I Am Dublin

This story of Ahmed, a young Somali refugee, is more topical than ever. Ahmed arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa in a fragile boat six years ago and was fingerprinted there. According to the Dublin Regulation, Italy was the designated country to handle his request for asylum. But Ahmed found life in Italy too tough, left for Sweden and went into hiding. When filmmaker David Aronowitsch found him, he had been in hiding for three years. Aronowitsch asks Ahmed to play the role of a young asylum seeker called Daoud, the main character in his short fiction film . Daoud’s story is a reflection of Ahmed’s own story. What the fictive Daoud goes through, Ahmed went through in real life. In parallel to the making of Aronowitsch and his co-filmmakers produce a documentary about Ahmed himself. Ahmed and others in his situation embody a failing political system. He might look like a regular teenager who likes hanging out with friends and checking out girls, but the truth is that he has been in a paralyzing deadlock for six years. “I’m mentally broken,” he says. “I don’t feel anything at all. I should have stayed in Somalia. Six years down the drain...”