
Witness - Mohamad at Eton
Mohamad Fahed is sixteen when he lands at Heathrow in September 2010 and is driven straight to Eton College, having won a scholarship covering two years at Britain's most prestigious private school. He grew up in the Al Rashidieh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, the third generation of his family born in exile, with genetic engineering as a dream that had few obvious paths from the camp to a laboratory. Shehani Fernando's film follows his first year adjusting to tailcoats and starched collars, unfamiliar canteen food, and a student body drawn overwhelmingly from Britain's privileged classes. Homesickness runs through the footage alongside the slower work of making friends in an environment built for a completely different kind of childhood. One scene has Mohamad describing camp life to a group of Eton students, who sit visibly unsettled by the gap between his history and their own. Part of the Al Jazeera Witness series, the film stays close to Mohamad's own perspective rather than turning him into a symbol, tracking what the scholarship actually changes and what it doesn't.