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Shocking story of Somali Khadra covers ten years of her life in the Netherlands, moving between hope and fear. The family reunion was not as rosy as she had thought and hoped.

The Somali Khadra arrives in the Netherlands in 1999. Filmmaker Eveline van Dijck gets to know her in psychotrauma clinic De Vonk and decides to keep following her. Khadra is desperate with grief, after she witnessed her relatives getting killed. Four of her five children survived, but she doesn’t know how they are doing. Then, in 2002, she receives good news. The Red Cross has traced three of her children in Kenya. The documentary follows Khadra during the red tape nonsense to get her kids back, including DNA examination. She can close Abdelkadir (17), Saadya (15) and Said (13) in her arms again, start a new life in Drachten and leave her past behind. The emotional reunion at Schiphol airport, however, does not result in the imagined happy end. The children have trouble adapting to their new life. Said threatens to go off the rails and Saadya had an experience when she was thirteen that rattles the family relations.

Title: Mijn kinderen leven nog
Year: 2011
Duration : 55 minutes
Category: Short Documentary
Edition: NFF 2011

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