Walden Media Partners with UNHCR to Highlight the Plight of Refugees
June 22, 2005
BOSTON - For six days this June, Walden Media and the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Minsk, Belarus and Kiev, Ukraine partnered on behalf of public awareness of the plight of refugees. Together they screened Walden Media's film I Am David for World Refugee Day Commemorations in both Eastern European cities.
The Washington offices of UNHCR first partnered with Walden Media in the fall of 2003 to highlight the plight of refugees worldwide through screenings of the film, I Am David. The film tells the story of a twelve year-old refugee boy who escape from a Soviet gulag in the early 1950s and makes his way home to his mother in Denmark. I Am David was first screened with UNHCR as part of the June 2004 World Refugee Day Celebrations in Washington, D.C. At the Washington screening, Screenwriter/Director Paul Feig, newcomer Ben Tibber (who plays David), and UNHCR's Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie, among many others, were on hand. This year in Minsk, the Ambassadors to Belarus from the United States, Bulgaria, and Sweden were on hand and the film played to a packed auditorium of 500. In Kiev, the film was shown to graduate students doing their work in diplomacy. Walden Media's Vice President of Education and Professional Development Randy Testa was on hand to make remarks in Minsk and in Kiev and to read a statement from Screenwriter/Director Feig, in his absence.
