The first edition features 11-year-old Isra'a, who is selling blackmarket cigarettes so that her extended family can pay smugglers to take them across the Mediterranean on a dinghy, while 27-year-old Hassan is fleeing imprisonment and torture in his native Damascus and is desperate to make the crossing at all costs In Syria, we film 24-year-old Anas as he prepares to leave the shattered city of Aleppo, with snipers firing at his departing taxi as he heads towards the Turkish border. And we meet Ahmad who, having left his wife and young family behind is racing to get to Britain so he can get them out of their besieged town in Syria. But he's stalled on Kos as the Greek island is overwhelmed and the authorities struggle to cope.
Ahmad's journey continues in this second episode. A Syrian Kurd, he has reached Athens, and rather than take the long and uncertain over-land route through Europe, he negotiates with a smuggler for a fake passport that he can use to fly to France. With his wife and young daughters trapped in Syria, time is of the essence. In Calais, his first attempt to cross the Channel almost results in suffocation in a flour tanker. But he refuses to give up on Britain. Also leaving Athens is 24-year-old Sadiq from Afghanistan, fleeing Taliban repression and violence and heading to Finland - a country of which he's never even seen a picture.
Syrian Kurd Ahmad's attempt to be smuggled into Britain in the back of a lorry finally pays off, and he is sent to Wakefield while his asylum claim is processed. Meanwhile, 21-year-old Alaigie prepares to leave Gambia to travel to Italy to find work; however his dangerous journey does not go as hoped. Twenty-seven-year-old Hassan, who survived the sinking of his dinghy in the Mediterranean, has reached Calais, but every attempt to board a train or lorry is thwarted. Filmed by both production and the refugees themselves, the result is a terrifyingly intimate yet uniquely epic portrait of the biggest movement of people that Europe has seen since World War II.
In this first episode we meet Dame, who arrived in the UK over 17 months ago. "I am a ghost in a prison" is how he describes his experience of life as a refugee in London. Ali and are Sharin are newly weds from Afghanistan. They have spent the last month camping on the streets of Thessaloniki, waiting for smugglers to get them across the heavily guarded borders into Macedonia and Serbia. This is not the honeymoon they dreamed of.
The rise of the right reverberates across Europe. Nazifa and Latif make a potentially life-changing decision. We also revisit Israa and her family (from series one), who risked their lives escaping Syria in 2015 and made the terrifying journey to Europe when borders were open and refugees welcome. They're living in a flat in Germany, and Israa is facing her first day at school. Meanwhile, Azizula must face his fears and attempt to cross the Hungarian border, knowing it is patrolled by armed guards who use dogs to deter and attack the refugees attempting to cut through the fence from Serbia to Hungary.
This final episode of the series follows the fate of Nazifa and her family as they make a final attempt to reach Germany. We catch up with Sadiq, who in series one managed to travel from Afghanistan to his destination of Finland in just 45 days. However, the welcome he experienced when he arrived has not been sustained. Across Europe policies have changed and deals have been struck, which means that if Sadiq's asylum claim fails, he faces forced deportation. Across the Atlantic, the USA is no longer welcoming refugees from the Middle East. President Trump's executive orders have far reaching consequences for those who were on the verge of emigrating to join family members already in the USA. We meet Saed and his family, who are Yezidis from Iraq, one of Daesh's main targets. They are living in a refugee camp waiting for their papers to be processed.
