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After a decades-long career in acting, Europe's refugee crisis has been the catalyst for Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave to make her directorial debut.
Redgrave spoke to Lateline about the film, Sea Sorrow, which she said she and her producer son Carlo Nero have poured all their money into.
"Life doesn't plan itself like that and I certainly didn't plan my life like that," she said.
"I didn't plan that there'd be this awful situation in which our European governments, just to start the story off, breaking the Geneva conventions on the protection on the human rights of refugees."
Image of Aylan Kurdi prompted her to make film
"Seeing that little boy, made me think we've gone somewhere special, we've gone somewhere horrendous, we've gone a step further - we being the European governments and us being all of Europe - in refusing protection for refugees."
Redgrave and son spent everything on the film
"We've spent every penny we've got making it so it'll be wonderful if we've got a few little sales," she said.
"But the sale part isn't the important thing, the important thing is that we share what we've seen and what we've made with as many people as possible everywhere in the world."
The risk of becoming hardened
"People talk about preaching to the converted which is total codswallop rubbish. There is no such thing as being converted forever, absolutely no such thing," she said
"You can get numbed, people can get hardened, it's not their fault, they just get hardened, news media get hardened, proprietors get even harder.
"So it's a film to keep the heart and the brain warm and responsive and thinking, that's what we've tried to do."
On Australia's refugee policy
"The fact is the Australian Government is breaking international law," she said.
"They pretend they're not, and I use the word pretend because all the politicians — it's not a party political question, all the politicians bar one or two are guilty."
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, documentary, australia, syrian-arab-republic