Tajamul is a former young migrant from Afghanistan. He came all the way to France when he was fourteen, after having fled Afghanistan. His journey lasted almost 14 months...

Tajamul and I met 7 years ago. Since then, we adopted each other, I became his father, he became my son.

Taj wanted me to make a movie with him, about what he went through, like so many other migrants he wants to speak out for.

He wanted to make a "real" movie which would not be like news which are necessary, but very often too short and meaningless. He wanted that we took time to tell the truth about the journey, it's harshness, it's violence, it's cruelty.

For a long time, I didn't want to make the documentary because I thought I was not fit to cary such words. But finally, I ended up saying yes to Taj. With him and Henri Desaunay, the cameraman, we left France to go through Switzerland, Austria, Hungaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, and Iran to finaly reach Afghanistan.

In the movie, Taj shows us the places that matter to him, he explains what happened there, tells us what he saw, what he felt: the mad hope that never abandoned him, but also the fear and the sadness, the kidnappings he tried to escape, the prison, the camps, the blows, the trucks he hid inside or under, the hunger, the loneliness, death...

But Taj is not sad. He never complains. As he says: "At least, I ended up somewhere". When he gets mad, when he gets political, it's to flag what is going on right now. He thinks it is his duty to speak out for those who can't, for those we don't consider like real human beings anymore and we don't want to hear.

Nowadays, Tajamul is twenty one. He likes to be well dressed, to party, he likes to sing songs by Ahmad Zahir, Black M or Bertrand Belin, He loves Simone Weil, Commandant Massoud, beautiful cars, democracy, Bollywood and freedom.

The documentary is also the portrayal of a young man who lives here and now, and who carries on his shoulders something like the world's chaos.

Director's bio: Dominique Choisy attended the French public cinema school IDHEC. He made a few short films, and then three fiction features: Modern Comfort (2001), Wild Strawberries (2011), and My Life With James Deans which has been released in the U.K. and the United States in 2018. Tajamul's Movie is his first full length documentary.

Le Film de Tajamul / Tajamul's Movie

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