Almudena Toral Documentary films that explore trauma and make space for healing TED Fellows
[SHAPE YOUR FUTURE]
It’s a warm morning and I’m surrounded
by six-year-old children in a classroom.
One by one, they cheerfully hug
one of their friends
who just came back home from a trip.
They comment on her new dress
and her new hairstyle.
But the girl does nothing.
She looks towards
the distant horizon, eyes fixed.
The kids start wondering
why she doesn’t speak.
The girl’s name is Adayanci,
and the trip she has just
returned from is not a vacation.
She left Guatemala with her dad
in May 2018 for the United States.
Several months later,
she’s back, but she has gone silent.
I’m filming this, feeling overwhelmed,
and finding it difficult to look
through the viewfinder of my camera.
Her post-traumatic
stress disorder is so visible.
I am in tears.
I am a journalist who documents
aftermaths for a living.
The impact, the invisible consequences.
What happens when the media
spotlight is gone?
That’s why I’ve spent hundreds of hours
listening to and watching people
deeply affected by trauma.
Survivors of trafficking,
child rape, gang slavery, forced labor
and immigration enforcement.
Different from the job
of psychiatrist and aid workers,
I’ve dedicated my life
to listening to them
to make their stories public,
in first person, in their own voice.
Despite all of the limitations
of words and photographs and films,
I believe better stories
about the effects of trauma
in people’s lives are essential.
They can show us the real consequences
of seemingly abstract government policies.
They can trigger understanding
across political divides
and awaken our universal sense of empathy.
Survivors like the now deceased Jennifer
taught me that brutal bondage
does not happen far away.
David taught me the horrors
refugees flee from
are scarier than any obstacle
in the quest for safety.
Adayanci brought home for me
that governments of developed nations
also harm using trauma as a weapon.
The word “trauma”
comes from ancient Greek.
It’s the word for “injury”.
It’s the psychological wound that stays
after something really terrible
has happened to us.
It affects our body, our mind,
our memory and our sense
of safety in the world.
War, violence, kidnapping, torture,
they are all causes of trauma.
But it does not only happen
far away, far from you.
In the United States, for example,
several large-scale community studies
have shown that exposure
to violence and terror,
like rape, domestic abuse or trafficking
are common and damaging in times of peace.
What I witnessed
in that classroom in Guatemala
was the aftermath
of the zero-tolerance policy.
It separated children from parents
at the US-Mexico border.
Adayanci was sent to a shelter
and two foster families
while her dad was deported.
In her despair,
she took a pair of scissors
and cut her own hair as a form of protest.
A psychologist diagnosed her
with acute stress,
warning it would become
post-traumatic stress disorder
the longer time passed.
The damage of this type of separation
at an early age,
just like other forms of abuse,
can be permanent
if the child doesn’t receive help.
In order to justify this kind of violence,
there is a will to make certain people
seem very different from us.
Evil, rapists, animals, criminals.
Stripping off their humanity
is a deliberate technique
used by governments
with plenty of examples in history books.
In this case, the so-called
evil, criminal and animal
was a shattered six-year-old girl.
We published Adayanci’s documentary.
The story won a World Press Photo award
thanks to which Adayanci
is receiving therapy in Guatemala.
She’s on her slow way back to recovery,
dancing and daydreaming.
But most others
have not gotten access to care.
Hundreds haven’t even been reunited
with their families.
The trauma these policies cost
can have generational effects.
Even in Adayanci’s fortunate case,
the family has no institutional support
and is in deep debt.
We humans heal from trauma
through feeling safe,
through storytelling
and through establishing connection
with others in our communities.
For this little girl reframing the story
she will tell herself
it’s part of her healing.
For us as a society,
reframing her story and pressuring
our governments to do better
is part of reclaiming
our dignity as equals.
Thank you.