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The New Policy Regarding Homeless Asylum Seekers
BY
Dennis Harvey

The New Policy Regarding Homeless Asylum Seekers is a follow-up to the Swedish Academy award-winning The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp (IDFA, 2024), which followed Sami, Simon and Hasiballah–three residents of an encampment for homeless asylum seekers which was burned down by a far-right mob in Dublin in 2023. In this film, we make the conscious decision to focus on the volunteer response to the latest policy for homeless asylum seekers, rather than focussing on the asylum seekers themselves. In early 2024, the Irish government ceases to provide accommodation to all asylum seekers for the second time. While funding charities to provide tents to homeless asylum seekers, the government simultaneously orders the authorities to prevent the asylum seekers from pitching these tents. In the film, we follow Olivia and her small group of predominantly female volunteers, who spend their mornings and evenings on the streets of Dublin helping homeless asylum seekers try to find a safe place to sleep each night. The volunteers and asylum seekers alike face constant harassment from both far-right politicians and the police.

Aspect ratio 1.78:1 (16:9)
Prod. format
Duration 00:14:28
Language Swedish
Color Color
Year 2025
Latest screening Jan 25, 2025
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About the artist

Dennis Harvey

Dennis is a filmmaker from Ireland. He is best known for his short documentary The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp (2024), which won the Swedish Academy Award for Best Short Film, was selected by the French Academy of Cinema as one of the Best Short Films of 2024, and received many other awards. Dennis mainly writes and directs documentaries, but has also produced and edited his own films. His first feature, I Must Away (2023), was a kaleidoscopic essay about movement filmed over seven years in six countries. His latest short, The New Policy Regarding Homeless Asylum Seekers (2025), is an uncompromising interrogation of Ireland’s inhuman asylum system and a dedication to those resisting it. His second feature, Útóipe Cheilteach (2025), a ballad tour through postcolonial Ireland, premiered at Locarno. With a cinema vérité approach and a particular sensitivity to the human, Dennis’ work interrogates the political through the personal. He is a member of the European Film Academy.

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