The makers of two Australian feature documentaries screening this week, The Defenders (June 15) and Freedom is Beautiful (June 11), are hoping to move audiences to look beyond their patch by examining the long-standing policy of offshore detention.
Both productions feature prominent Australian footballer and human rights advocate Craig Foster who has emerged in recent years as an ardent voice for refugee rights.
Mr Foster sprung into action when Bahraini soccer player Hakeem Al-Araibi, a Shia Muslim who took part in the Arab Spring protests, was detained in Thailand after Interpol issued a red notice for his deportation back to the Gulf monarchy.
Al-Araibi was later sentenced in absentia by Bahraini authorities to 10 years in prison on the charge of vandalising a police station during nationwide demonstrations.
He sought asylum in Australia in 2014 but on his honeymoon in Thailand in 2018 was held in Bangkok airport and locked up for 77 days.
Mr Foster led a global campaign with human rights groups that eventually led to Al-Araibi's release in early 2019 and return to Australia, where he was eventually granted citizenship by former prime minister Scott Morrison.
"The football community which is many millions strong could immediately see him as one of their own, not as a member of these two marginalised communities (Muslim and refugee)," Mr Foster told AAP.
"Our Matildas, our Socceroos, our club teams and our fans started holding banners at games and all of a sudden sport was the construct that humanised Hakeem and that's what sport does."
Al-Araibi's story of international intrigue involving several governments reached the highest levels of the football's governing body FIFA and is chronicled in The Defenders - a nod to his position on the pitch.
After helping secure the soccer player's release, Mr Foster embarked on another more regional campaign with Amnesty International, co-producer of Freedom is Beautiful.
That campaign called for the release of refugees detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru by the Australian government, with Mr Foster befriending two Kurdish-Iranian refugees, Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa Moz Azimitabar.
Freedom is Beautiful is the tale of their close friendship rooted in a love of music and art.
Both men escaped persecution in Iran and connected in detention when one day Mr Bandesh, who since his release has become a winemaker in Melbourne, heard Mr Azimitabar strumming the chords of a guitar in his room.
The film portrays a shared artistic sensibility bursting with possibilities beyond the confines of detention, but also recounts how the men's mental and physical health deteriorated.
They were eventually evacuated for medical treatment to Mantra Hotel in Melbourne after about seven years on Manus Island.
"We are trying to send a message with this documentary about what the (Australian) government has done to us and are doing to innocent people in detention, that it's not right," Mr Bandesh told AAP.
"They (the Australian government) tried to kill our hopes, we're not going to let them bury us, we are survivors."
Mr Bandesh, 41, was released on his birthday in December 2020 but remains on a bridging visa which he hopes will translate one day into permanent residency.
"I feel unclear that I cannot make a life here. This is torture, it's a sick, psychotic policy," he said, describing the uncertainty that comes with renewing his visa every six months.
The documentary is directed by award-winning visual artist Angus McDonald.
"I hope people love the film and they hear us and see the resistance of how much pain and suffering we've been through from this dirty policy (offshore detention)," said Mr Bandesh.
"They can be our amplifier to those people who are still suffering and have no future."
