We live in a world where industrialized nations are increasingly pitted against developing countries, east shapes up against west, poor against wealthy, white against black, Christian against Moslem. This is a time in history when it's easy for the west to look inward, to look after its own, and to close its doors on people fleeing political discrimination, economic hardship, or religious persecution. This climate makes it all the more extraordinary that a small group of committed Australians are willing to go in search of discarded asylum seekers; the people who failed to convince the Australian Government they have 'a well-founded fear' of persecution.

There's no doubt Government authorities find it difficult to assess whether someone is a legitimate refugee; people don't always escape their countries with documentation that proves who they say they are, or supports their claims of persecution. But a lot rests on the decisions Australian authorities make about the lives of asylum seekers who reach our shores. In making A Well-Founded Fear we wanted to show that we can't afford to get these decisions wrong - if we do, people can die. It's as simple as that.

The 1951 Convention on Refugees imposes a major obligation on countries not to deport or expel people to countries where they face persecution or risk serious human rights violations. The big question is, if countries like Australia don't monitor what happens to the people they deport, how on earth will they know whether they're making the right decisions?

In making A Well-Founded Fear we wanted to create an accurate record of what we believe will turn out to be a particularly dark period of Australia's recent history. We wanted to find out where deported asylum seekers end up, to find out what sort of lives they now lead, and whether they really are safe. We also wanted to reflect on the processes that Australia uses to determine whether someone should be allowed to stay in Australia, or be sent back. These processes are still in place; the current Federal Government still deports people who it finds are not refugees, and the people who make these decisions in the first instance are Immigration officials.

In making this film we also wanted to determine what drives a man like Phil Glendenning to do what he does. What makes an Australian bloke travel across the globe to dangerous, war-torn countries in search of rejected asylum seekers? Other than Glendenning there is no one else in the world who regularly investigates what happens to rejected and deported asylum seekers. That?s despite the fact deportation is used by many countries as a solution for unwanted asylum seekers. We wanted this film to be, in-part, a character study of a remarkable, committed Australian, as he travels the globe and gives volume to the silenced voices that are Australia's unwanted.

We wanted the film to expose the implications of global migration and the consequences of deportation. However our primary focus was always the personal stories of the deportees; we want to put faces to names, and numbers. By hearing the details of individual lives we hope an audience will empathise with, and understand, the situations deported asylum seekers now face, and will see that the hopes and dreams of most asylum seekers are not so very different from our own. By imagining ourselves in a similar situation then hopefully we will come to terms with our role in their fate.

- Anne Delaney