The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2022–2023
UNHCR's Uprooted puts 60+ Ukrainian refugees behind and in front of the camera
A PTSD film for the UN Refugee Agency that is made by over 60 Ukrainian refugees — who even wear the clothes they fled in.
UNHCR
What it had to solve
The UN Refugee Agency set out to tell the untold story of PTSD — how war lives on in the minds of those who flee and how ordinary events can suddenly trigger fear, emotion and trauma.
How it works
For people who flee war, the war does not end at the border. Uprooted, a short film released by the UN Refugee Agency, tells that untold story of PTSD: how conflict lives on in the mind and how everyday events — a slamming door, a sudden sound — can trigger fear, emotion and trauma.
The film's answer to that subject was to change who makes the film. Over 60 Ukrainian refugees were involved in the project, including writers, choreographers, designers, casting producers, styling assistants, set dressers, make-up artists, musicians and all the talent featured on screen. Displacement was not described by outsiders; it was crafted by the people living it.
The most deliberate detail was wardrobe: each actor's costume incorporated an item of clothing they actually wore when fleeing their country. The refugees were not just subjects to be filmed sympathetically — they were the crew, the cast and the story's own witnesses, with the clothes on their backs as proof.
Why it lands
- Hiring refugees into every role — writers, designers, choreographers, crew and cast — makes the film an exercise of agency, not just an appeal for sympathy.
- Clothes worn while fleeing cannot be faked: worn on camera, they make every performance its own testimony.
- Dramatising everyday triggers — a door, a sound — shows how PTSD works instead of explaining it, so viewers feel how war returns uninvited.
- Featuring the people who lived the experience keeps the film from speaking for refugees; it lets them speak, design and perform for themselves.
What it did
The film became an act of authorship rather than testimony: the people living displacement made the work at every level, and the flight clothes on screen carry the story's proof. D&AD's awards archive keeps the film.
What you can take
When a story is about a community's inner life, let that community make it: refugees as writers, crew and cast turn empathy into authorship — the one prop nobody can fake is the clothes they fled in.
Since then
Uprooted entered D&AD's awards archive as a short film led by Atmosphere Dance Ukraine, where it sits as an example of how a difficult subject gains power when the affected community makes the work. Its production model — refugees in the credits and in the wardrobe — outlives the film as the proof of its own authenticity.
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