Seventeen-year-old Sarya has spent most of her life in Japan, yet a single bureaucratic letter is enough to upend everything she thought was settled in My Small Land, Emma Kawawada's 2022 drama.
What is My Small Land about?
Sarya is a Kurdish refugee girl who has grown up in Japan, going to school, working part-time, and quietly building an ordinary teenage life alongside her Japanese friends. That fragile normalcy shifts when her family's refugee status is suddenly denied, throwing their right to stay into question and forcing Sarya to hide the truth of her situation from the people closest to her. The film follows her as she tries to hold together a life that no longer has any legal footing beneath it, caught between the country she calls home and a system that refuses to recognize her as belonging there. Kawawada shoots the story with a restrained, observational eye, letting Sarya's daily routines carry the weight of what she stands to lose.
About the cast
Lina Arashi plays Sarya, supported by Daiken Okudaira, Arashi Kahafizadeh, Lilly Kahafizadeh, and Lion Kahafizadeh, alongside Takashi Fujii and Chizuru Ikewaki, with Hanae Kan rounding out the ensemble.
Context & significance
A France-Japan co-production released in 2022, My Small Land sits within a strand of contemporary drama that examines migration and statelessness through a young protagonist's daily life rather than through courtroom or political framing. Directed by Emma Kawawada, the film runs 114 minutes and takes its time with Sarya's world, favoring accumulated small moments over a single dramatic turning point. It has drawn attention on the festival circuit for how it grounds a difficult legal reality in an intimate, coming-of-age register.
Watching My Small Land on Ktime
My Small Land is available on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, giving Farsi-speaking viewers flexibility in how they watch. A free K-Time account and login are required to stream the film, while the page itself remains open to read without signing in. K-Time's Farsi-first catalogue makes titles like this one, which might otherwise be hard to find, accessible to Persian-speaking audiences everywhere.