Silent Trees (Drzewa milczą)

When her mother dies in the forest on the Polish-Belarusian border, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl Runa has to grow up quickly to take care of her four younger brothers and helpless, depressed father. The family deals with trauma in a refugee camp and tries to establish a new life in Poland. Runa's greatest fear is being forced to return to Iraq, where Kurds face the threat of ISIS. She wants to live like her newfound European friends and become a lawyer. But just as her dream of going back to school comes true, another threat appears – the threat of deportation. Runa escapes from everyday problems in a sketchbook filled with drawings that express what she feels and that gradually come to life. Silent Trees is a partially animated coming of age story in the times of the global refugee crisis.