My Dear Muslim

"Dear Muslim, if we're not here anymore when you've grown up, never forget that you're a Chechen and it is your duty to help your people as best you can." This is just one of many messages that Sacita has written in her diary for her three-year-old son Muslim. A year ago, she along with her husband and other surviving members of their family traveled to Poland, where they applied for asylum. With them, they brought videotapes and photographs that provide a clear testimony of the war in their home country, and contain many painful memories. Sacita's father and brother were murdered, probably because of her work as a journalist; the videotapes were most likely the reason why her sister was held in custody and tortured for several days; together, these were ultimately the reasons why her family had to leave Chechnya, although they would have preferred to stay at home. Now they are waiting to see whether Poland will grant them asylum, recollecting the past and hoping for a better future. But little Muslim also makes them think about the present: peace in Chechnya is nowhere in sight and their son will probably grow up in a foreign country. Through the personal story of Sacita and her family, director Kerstin Nickig reports on the endless and seemingly hopeless nature of the conflict in Chechnya that has in one way or another been going on for two hundred years or so. Thanks to the unique footage obtained by Sacita and her husband, Nickig takes another look at the ill-fated fortunes of a small but defiant country in the Caucuses, which has been abandoned by almost half its inhabitants during the last ten years and where tens to hundreds of thousands of civilians have died.