Film Premiere Utica: The Last Refuge

The Center (formerly the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees), along with supporter and corporate advocates Indium Corporation and Bank of Utica, and with a grant from CNY Arts, invite the community to join them at the Stanley Theatre on Saturday, November 13, 2021, at 7pm for the film premiere Utica: The Last Refuge. There will be a question and answer panel with the filmmaker, Loch Phillipps, directly following the showing. Tickets are $10 general/$5 student and available at The Stanley Box Office at 315-724-4000.

The film opens with the Azeins, a refugee family from Sudan, arriving at Syracuse International Airport. After spending six years in a camp in Ethiopia, they have at last made it to the US, where they are welcomed by Abdelshakour, an employee of Utica’s venerable refugee resettlement agency, and a fellow refugee from Sudan. The Center is regarded nationally as a model agency for how refugee resettlement is done, for how they guide Utica’s refugees into new jobs and lives. Utica is renowned as “The town that loves refugees.” This film peels back the layers, the interconnectedness of people, services, and the larger community, to welcome refugees. This film celebrates hope, resiliency and the human spirit in a small, vibrant city in the Mohawk Valley.

“Everything in this film- the slices of everyday life, the intimacy- details a people and a community who found each other and gained salvation. I am proud to say it is my community and I have never before seen it captured so perfectly.” – John Zogby