From the outside looking in: “Amira’s Children” at the 2026 goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film5 min read
Amira’s Children (2025), a documentary by Czech director Markéta Ekrt Válková, follows the lives of the Alhariri family over the course of a decade, as they flee the Syrian civil war and resettle in Czechia.
In 2015, Czechia initiated a resettlement program for a small group of Syrian refugee families with children with special medical needs. Amira’s son, Montaser, has a rare heart condition that qualifies the family for resettlement.
Nothing remarkable happens to center the film, though perhaps that is the point. We see the six children grow up, some into adulthood. We see the family grapple with the normal grievances of homework and missing school, teenagers being teenagers. We empathize with having to navigate the paperwork, the hospitals, jobs, and schools, all foreign and overwhelming.
The very scale of the passage of time is the film’s most striking feature. Over the course of the decade, we see the struggles, the joys, the challenges, and most of all, how all six children grow and adapt to their new home. The dichotomy between the children and their parents mirrors the common immigrant experience. Children learn and adapt quickly, the unfamiliar letters and sounds of the Czech language quickly rolling off their tongues, while the parents struggle to find themselves in the context of their new home .
Perhaps one of the most interesting features is when and how the family speaks Czech rather than Arabic. The youngest children seem to speak Czech with each other. The teens speak in Arabic, but also in Czech with their younger siblings. We see the older kids running errands, attending doctor’s visits, and serving as interpreters for their parents, a commonplace experience of young immigrants. Amira and her husband struggle to learn Czech, though not for lack of effort. By the end of the film, we see Amira preparing for her citizenship exam, which requires language proficiency at a certain level.
While the decade of documentation makes a compelling subject, Válková’s timeline skips years at a time, and there seems to be no real rhyme or reason to which years she shows and which she skips. The final result contributes to the sense that the scenes in the final cut seem almost staged at times.
Válková also fails to really do a deep dive on the factor of religion throughout the film, which feels like a missed opportunity. When we first hear from Amira, she says of Czechia: “All we knew was that it was the center of Europe, and they didn’t like Muslims there.”
Religion is clearly an important tether to home for both Amira and her husband. As her eldest sons Kenan and Montaser become teenagers, clear differences emerge between their worldview and that of their friends, around dating, drinking, and gender relations.
At one point, Montaser is visiting a friend’s house and his phone reminds him it is time for prayer. “Is praying fun?” his friend asks. “Well you get to talk to God,” Montaser replies. “So that sounds good” observes his friend. It’s not a huge statement on religious differences, but an inkling of genuine curiosity. The boys turn back to their video game.
The exchange is emblematic of how Válková approaches the idea of cultural divide. These differences are almost observed matter of factly, as if it is a given that the Alhariri family is largely accepted. The closest we get to real tension is when Kenan tells his friends he got into an argument with his culinary school instructor over eating pork.
Perhaps the most important arc of the film really comes to a head with the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, seven years into the family’s life in Czechia. In perhaps the film’s most powerful moment, Montaser and a newly arrived Ukrainian student are talking after school. Devoid of any emotion in the delivery, Montaser explains to his fellow student :
“Even Muslims and Arabs are talking about Ukraine. It used to be like this with Syria, everyone talked of the war there, and then they moved on. It’s like that with every country at war. People start to help, but then another war starts and they forget about your country and move on to another one.”
It is a very matter of fact observation, and sadly a true one. The aforementioned Czech program for resettlement during the Syrian civil war accepted just a handful of refugees (about 20 according to UNHCR). In contrast, almost 400,000 Ukrainians received temporary protection status in Czechia since 2022. Neighboring Poland famously rejected all EU relocation mechanisms for Syrian refugees between 2015-2023, contrasting its response to the war in Ukraine. This exchange between two teenagers, both caught up in the fallout of war, showcases the obvious Central European double standard to immigration and aid.
Towards the end of the decade of filming, Amira considers whether a move back to Syria or Jordan would be best for the family. “Let’s look past our homesickness. Where will they have a better life?” her husband Abdul asks. Seemingly in a compromise, part of the family decides to travel to Jordan to visit Abdul’s ailing mother, whom he hasn’t seen in nine years. The trip proves to be a poignant bookend of the family’s story, an emotional reunion with family left behind, but an even more emotional return to Czechia. “When I went to Jordan, I felt like a stranger there.” Amira admits, speaking notably in Czech: “When we came back, I thought, finally home! This is where I have purpose.”
To follow a family’s journey over a decade is an ambitious feat and Válková’s efforts provide a sweeping exploration of the meaning of home, belonging, and the many seemingly mundane moments that ultimately amount to reconstructing a new life. It is perhaps an incomplete picture of the Alhariris’ experience, but nonetheless a compelling one.
Amira’s Children (2025) was screened as part of the 2026 goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film.
