Documentary film on the reception and integration of refugees inspired by UC project
"My heart is there, my body is here" is available online
English version by Diana Taborda
Their bodies are here, in Portugal, but their hearts are still there, in the country they were forced to leave: the painful story of a group of people with refugee status.
The documentary "My heart is there, my body is here", made in the framework of the TEACHmi project of the Centre for Citizenship and Social Intervention (OCIS) of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra (FPCEUC), is available online for free here. The film is a co-production between the UC and Cooperativa Propella, shot in Coimbra and directed by Pedro Cruz and João Doce.
This documentary focuses on the stories - past, present and future - of people with refugee status, who are often unknown to society at large. The protagonists of the documentary participated in the European project TEACHmi, developed by a consortium integrated by the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the UC (FPCEUC), aimed at "providing effective tools, teaching materials and guidelines to support the integration of students from migrant backgrounds in schools, making the school environment more inclusive. "It shows the main faces and voices of these projects. Faces and voices that are not usually seen or heard in social and scientific interventions. They humanize numbers and theoretical concepts, these are the faces and voices of real young people, right here, next to us, in Coimbra. Humanizing science is fundamental, and documentaries have an undisputed power to do so," adds Clara Cruz Santos, coordinator of the Portuguese TEACHmi project team and professor at FPCEUC.
"This film relies first and foremost on the extraordinary generosity of these people, who agreed to tell their stories, thus giving three-dimensionality and a voice to an issue that has never disappeared, but is still subject to media hype, as we are witnessing once again in 2022," says João Doce (social intervener and musician) and Pedro Cruz (filmmaker and psychologist), both founders of the Cooperativa Propella, which co-produced the documentary with the University of Coimbra.
Watch the trailer here.