Every day, children entrusted me with what they have endured: a young gymnast living with the loss of a limb; a teenager who watched his father die in front of him; an eleven-year-old who can no longer wear a skirt because of what she has seen — and what she fears. I also met children who had been taken across borders and held for months — children who described coldest winters without blankets, isolation, and punishment. Hearing these accounts did not simply move me. It altered my understanding of cruelty and responsibility. It angered me.

The stories were unbearable: loss, displacement, fear, captivity, and the daily collapse of what “normal” used to mean. Many days I felt close to stopping. Then I understood that my discomfort was insignificant beside what these children were carrying. If the world insists on debating war as strategy, this film insists on locating it where it truly lands: in a child’s body, memory, and future.

Because our contributors are children, ethics and safeguarding governed every choice — from how participants were identified, to how consent and child assent were confirmed, to how we shot and edited. I wanted the soundscape of war to remain truthful, not sensational; the camera never hunts for trauma; it holds space for testimony. Silence is allowed to remain silence, to speak as loudly as words. The frame is never there to extract; it is there to witness.

This is not a film about politics. It is a film about the human cost of violence on the smallest lives — and about what happens when a child’s most ordinary question becomes impossible to answer. Parents everywhere know the phrase “Can I go home now?” It is a child asking for warmth, safety, and certainty — and almost always the answer is simple: Yes. The tragedy at the centre of this film is that for these children, the answer is still unresolved — and for millions of children globally — “home” is no longer a place adults can promise.

I did not make this film to shock. I am not drawn to suffering; I am driven by urgency. In the face of ongoing catastrophe, silence becomes complicity. I made it so that what has been lived by children cannot be minimised, politicised, or forgotten. My hope is that Can I Go Home Now? reaches audiences not as information, but as an encounter — an emotion — one that stays in your heart — and that it helps move us from passive witnessing to active responsibility. This film is my tribute to children’s resilience, and my plea to humanity: if we cannot protect children, then nothing we call “civilisation” is real.