As Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers continues to garner international condemnation, it’s been estimated that the government has funnelled $10 billion into the policy.

While public support at home remains high, it’s more difficult to maintain a hard line against refugees when confronted by stories of children trying to live a normal life in the face of unimaginable loss.

At least, that’s the hope of young filmmaker David Mason, whose debut feature documentary Cast from the Storm follows the work of Treehouse Theatre, a volunteer-run company that works with refugee school kids in Sydney to dramatise their stories.

“I stumbled across them and had no idea what to expect,” Mason says.

“These young kids started telling childhood stories I could relate to, funny memories about playing with chickens or soccer, then all of a sudden they’re talking about bombs in marketplaces, the things they’ve had to flee from and their journeys by boat.”

Mason contacted Treehouse Theatre’s artistic director Ruth Hartcher-O’Brien and they agreed to document her work with psychologist Catherine Maguire-Donvito and former refugee, now English teacher, Tehmineh Hossieny, an Afghan-Iranian.

They donate their time to work with the kids on top of full-time careers.

“Their dedication is incredible,” Mason says. “The emotional weight of maybe 20 students’ stories can be quite a burden but they take it on tremendously well.”

As inspirational as these women are, it’s the kids who steal the show in Cast from the Storm.

Just like any teenagers, they love to muck around and have a laugh, challenge authority and act out and, at times, the doco is very funny.

At other times it is devastating, such as when one girl relays her mother’s words as they prepared to flee: “If we die here or on the boat, it’s the same, so we will die together or live together.”

Two young brothers, clearly devoted to each other, comfort each other as they face painful memories of their father’s death. Another young girl learns about the death of the classmates she left behind.

Mason left a role at the Seven Network to work on the doco full time, a three-year process, and hopes as many people as possible will get to see it.

“At times filming was really heavy, but one of the ways I got through that was I found a commitment to tell their stories because I knew how important that was. It’s been an amazing experience.”

Scenes showing the Treehouse actors visiting rural Gloucester and being embraced by school kids there gave Mason hope.

“That was such a fun experience going up there and seeing students that have lived a fairly sheltered life in rural Australia bonding with kids from Iran and Afghanistan,” he says.

“I think that cross-cultural exchange is really important and for me it’s pointing towards the solution. Acceptance and understanding is key for anyone refugee to move on, and then the benefit that recent migrants can add to the community is incredible.”

You can watch Cast from the Storm for free HERE until the start of the UN Summit on Refugees and Migration on September 19.