The Big Sea is a story about fear, survival and the search for freedom,
following young refugees as they learn to confront the waters that once carried them to safety.

It was night when 15-year-old Hanan boarded a small rubber boat in Turkey.

“I was scared,” she recalls. “All I saw was water.”

It was the first time Hanan had ever seen the sea. Now, surrounded by around 50 other refugees, she was crossing it in the hope of reaching Europe. Her family had already spent a month fleeing the war in Iraq, travelling first to a refugee camp in Turkey and then towards an uncertain future across the water.

The boat was dangerously overcrowded. People sat pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, feet to feet. A hole in the rubber allowed water to seep inside.

“I didn’t know how to swim,” Hanan remembers. “I thought we would drown.”

At daybreak, the boat reached a small Greek island.
The family continued their journey, eventually making their way to Germany.

A year later, Hanan stands at the edge of a swimming pool. For the first time, she is learning to swim, alongside other refugees who share the same fear of water and the same memories of the crossing.

“When I am in the water, I still think about the boat,” she says.
“I want to swim in the big sea. That’s when I’ll be free.”

For Hanan, learning to swim is about more than overcoming a fear. It is about reclaiming the water that once threatened her life, and imagining a future no longer defined by the journey she endured.

2018