Primo Levi once said: "Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." The 2018 documentary "Shanti Khana" begins with a story of the victims of similar monsters. "Shanti" means "Peace" while "Khana" means "Place" together they become "A place of peace". Directed, filmed, and edited by Lauren Anders Brown, "Shanti Khana" is a story told from the first person perspective of a woman in the Rohingya Refugee as she searches for peace and psychosocial support in the camps at Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. In the documentary the narration was done by Ashley Judd, while the music was composed by Two Twenty-Two and sound design was done by Maximme Russo.
The documentary begins from a very strong point of identifying the last time that a group of people chose to cleanse its society of the people identifying as a certain religion, reiterating Primo Levi's point, the narrator identifies that it happened not only because of the actions of that group of persecutors, but also because of the inaction of the people who remained silent.
Muslim Rohingyas have been fleeing persecution for close to thirty years but it came to a point where a majority of Muslims could simply take it no more, on August 25, 2017 over six hundred twenty-five thousand of them sought refuge in Bangladesh. Most of them being women and children. The documentary then begins telling the story of Rohingya women who recalls his home community in Myanmar where they had a house, they were surrounded by walls which gave them the privacy which brought freedom to perform their daily tasks The girl in a very sad tone mentions that she misses her home. Fleeing Myanmar wasn't an easy journey, this becomes even more challenging if you're pregnant like Minara was.
The journey was just the beginning of the challenges that the refugees are to face. Despite on arriving to Bangladesh, they got the supplies to survive and shelter to sleep under but still there is no place like home and that cannot be given to you by anybody. Adding to the difficulties of the survivors, most of them don't know how to speak Bangla or English so there exists a language barrier.
Watching this documentary informed me of the challenges that the Muslims of Rohingya face after they have escaped the torture of the monsters in Myanmar. The documentary obviously has a very powerful story to tell and the way that has been done is no slack either. The documentary takes a very laidback approach in telling the story of the refugees and that is that for a huge chunk the narrator goes silent and lets us, the audience, see the refugees in their everyday life in the camps. The story itself is so powerful that there isn't a great need to say much and that is something that this documentary has been able to use brilliantly which delivers the message of the documentary right to the bone.