HIDDEN HEROES by Anjum Malik

The movement of people leaving their homelands can be both traumatic and an exhilarating experience. It brings new opportunities and experiences, unforeseen challenges and hurdles. It demands agility, creativity and thinking on your feet. Within the chaos and change are Hidden Heroes who rise unseen, taking care of all around. Through language, translations, packing, carrying loads, feeding, soothing, caring… In closed interview rooms at airports, police stations, government offices, on the road, in planes, on buses and in new homes, schools and surgeries, these heroes carry out their duties, tasks, not having any choice but to get on. They are young sons, daughters and mothers, wives, sisters. This film explores and shines a light on a group of women’s stories who have made Manchester their home through the mediums of poetry, portraiture and film. The Hidden heroes in this film are women, mothers of primary school children in Manchester. 
Each woman did a sitting whilst artist Amina Ansari created a portrait using an iPad and an app, poet and scriptwriter Anjum Malik noted and interviewed the women to create poems out of their stories and Didzis Starastin filmed the whole process. The theme was to engage with human experience looking at recent migrant experiences, as a traveller/ refugee capturing intrinsic human values of the self.