Survivors

Hope and resilience in the time of Ebola

www.survivorsfilm.com SYNOPSIS: Through the eyes of Sierra Leonean filmmaker Arthur Pratt, Survivors presents a heart-connected portrait of his country during the Ebola outbreak, exposing the complexity of the epidemic and the socio-political turmoil that lies in its wake. Survivors chronicles the remarkable stories of Sierra Leoneans during what is now widely regarded as the most acute public health crisis of the modern era. Survivors interweaves the heroic stories of Mohamed Bangura, the senior ambulance driver at the country’s main emergency vehicle dispatch; and, Margaret Kabba Sesay, a nurse who works at the Emergency Ebola Treatment Center, caring for some of the sickest patients. Through intimate verite footage of these characters’ daily lives and Arthur’s first-person account of his own family's experience, the film not only explores how the epidemic ravaged families and communities, but also exposed broken infrastructures, deep misunderstandings between international aid organizations and the communities they serve, as well as unresolved political tensions after the decade-long civil war. In this way, Survivors profoundly wrestles with what it means to be Sierra Leonean at this critical juncture in the country’s history.