In ‘My Life: The Boy on the Bicycle’, we are taken on an unprecedented and fascinating guided tour by 16 year-old Syrian boy, Ahmed, through one of the biggest refugee camps in the world – Zaatari in Jordan. Ahmed is like any other boy his age, except he’s had to leave everything behind, including his toys and technology, to move to the refugee camp.

Executive Producer: Alison Gregory
Director: Stefania Buonajuti

This film revisits three remarkable Syrian refugee children – Ahmed, Ola and Ali – whose lives in Za’atari refugee camp were featured in the multi-award winning 2015 documentary, My Life: The Boy on the Bicycle. After seven years of conflict in Syria, there are now five million Syrian refugees scattered across the world and this film explores some of the longer-term legacies of war – how it can shape the lives of the children who managed to get away, forever. My Life: The Boy on the Bicycle Two Years On finds the three children and their families as they are now, and they all have surprising and heart-warming stories to tell. The original ‘boy on the bicycle’ Ahmed, is now 18 and lives outside Jordan’s capital Amman with this family, Ali, 14 is still in Za’atari camp and spends a lot of his time with his new baby brother born in the camp, and Ola, also 14, has moved to Europe with her mother and siblings to be reunited with her father and is building a new life in Germany. 

Confident and charismatic Ahmed is again the English-speaking guide to the challenges of his new life. His focus is still on getting an education, which will improve his family’s fortunes. But as the only breadwinner in the family, it’s tough. Ali is also busy studying hard in the camp and helping raise his younger siblings – he knows that, realistically, a return to his home in Syria is a long way off. Thousands of miles away in Germany, Ola has joined huge numbers of Syrian refugees trying to learn a new language and forge a future in Europe after a long and difficult journey to get there