Freedom Is Beautiful (2023)
Freedom Is Beautiful is the story of two extraordinary Kurdish refugees, Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa (Moz) Azimitabar who fled persecution in Iran & arrived separately by boat into Australia seeking asylum in 2013.Reaching Christmas Island just days after the Rudd Government instituted Australia's new hard-line offshore processing policy in July that year, they were transferred offshore & subsequently held for almost 8 years by the Federal Government.On Manus Island, where they spent 6 years, they met & formed a close friendship founded on art, music & a shared desire to speak out & resist. In 2019 they were transferred to the mainland & spent 18 months in immigration detention in Melbourne. In 2021, just a month apart, they finally gained their freedom, for the first time in their lives.Moz and Farhad are exceptional, charismatic & articulate men, who from their early years of detention on Manus, rose to become pivotal voices in the collective struggle against an arbitrary regime that unjustly imprisoned thousands of innocent & vulnerable people.During years of captivity in an environment of institutionalised brutality & violence, they experienced health issues, trauma, PTSD. They witnessed suffering and death, were isolated, dehumanised & assailed by a system deliberately design