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Amy Bench, USA, 2022
Filmmaker Amy Bench directs and shares production accolades with Carolyn Merriman, Eloise DeJoria and Constance Dykhulzen in their latest animated short MORE THAN I CAN REMEMBER. In collaboration with Maya Edelman, the film's animation director, they choose to showcase the humanitarian crisis in southeastern Congo where unaccompanied refugee children must find a harrowing path to survival.
In 2013, the village of Murambya was burned to the ground by the Mai Mai, a local milita in southeastern Congo (DRC). The Mai Mai believes that the Banyamulenge people (a persecuted minority) are intruders in their own country and have vowed to exterminate them.
Over 300 villages have been destroyed in the region in recent years forcing two hundred thousand people to flee their homes. Bench's film MORE THAN I CAN REMBER, is the story of just one lone girl, Mugeni who survived the milita attack on her village and escaped to the surrounding forest with her life.
At the age of 14, Mugeni is in hiding. Fortunately, she finds a man and his daughter who also fled the village. They had nothing but God to guide them. They traveled together to cross into Kenya. At that point, they separated. Mugeni, now completely alone embarks on a solo journey to find her family.
Edelman uses rich textured colors, and a limitless palette strives to match the breadth of Mugeni's sensitivity and boldness. She says, "Her zest for life is the underlying fabric of the story." Bench notes, "The language of this film is one where these large landscapes and the juxtaposition of simplified character animation allow the audience to focus on Mugeni's very dense recollections of the horrific circumstances by which she fled her home country, and the trials she surmounted along the way."
In the first person, Mugeni shares her unimaginable experiences that take her across the globe in search of family; but ultimately finds hope and love among an adopted people group.
The life-saving program Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program (URM) to welcome and resettle unaccompanied minors like Mugeni, was nearly eliminated in 2018 in the United States by the previous administration. Mugeni is now an advocate for this issue to protect the legacy of (URM). (KP)