Vancouver director Vic Sarin felt compelled to tell the dark story of child-trafficking that producer Noemi Weis pitched to him two years ago about the Middle Eastern tradition of camel racing.
“How can we see the war on television but we don’t know anything about this,” he said. “Where is our humanity?”
The documentary Desert Riders follows the stories of different boys taken from countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan or Sudan to work as camel jockeys in the United Arab Emirates.
In the opening scenes, a boy no older than 10, nonchalantly describes how he has watched fellow riders die after falling from their camels either – strangled in the jockey harness or trampled by following animals.
Such horrific and foreign scenes set the pace for the documentary that explores an unglamourous side to the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
“I play the beauty of these places with the darker stories,” said Sarin.
Some of the boys, three to 15, were sent by their families with promises of money and an education from camel farms. Others were stolen by traffickers and were issued fake documents for their travel.
However there are many sides to the story and Sarin made it his mission to gather the evidence and present it in a way that still leaves interpretation open to the viewer.
“I felt very strongly about this that I must go to talk to everyone there at every level,” said Sarin. “I try to find everyone’s voice.”
Unlike many dark-subject documentaries, Desert Riders leaves audiences with a sense of hope showing the steps that have been taken to stop the practice of boy camel jockeys.
“It is a positive story where the media was the protagonist to put an end to this,” Sarin said on journalists’ efforts to expose the story.
Sarin’s emotive filmmaking was also apparent his film A Shine of Rainbows which opened Vancouver International Film Festival last year.
With encouraging results from Vancouver audiences again, Sarin said he hopes to send the film to the big screen.
However, he is already working on his next film titled Hue and does not plan to revisit the story of Desert Riders.
“As they grow older, they will take control of their lives and many already have,” he said.
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
About The Reporter
