The mini-series “Stateless” promotes a narrative involving Cornelia Rau at Kenja Communication.

This narrative is not only false, but also trivialises the issue of mental health.

Cornelia had a history of mental illness which had nothing to do with Kenja. She spent a short time participating in Kenja in 1998 when she was 32 years old. Due to her mental health issues she was asked to leave as we were unable to provide the kind of help she required.

The events concerning her detention occurred 6 years later.

Not surprisingly, the Palmer Inquiry into how Cornelia found herself in detention made no reference to Kenja. This seems to have been of no concern to the film makers, and they did not consult us.

Truth however, is an essential component of genuine creativity. The Stateless version aligns with a false and malicious narrative which was promoted at the time by people who were openly hostile to Kenja, and appears to have been adopted to spice up the series.

The awful demonisation of refugees is a central theme of Stateless. Regrettably, the directors have engaged in some foul demonisation of their own – in the characters of Gordon and Pat Masters. Ultimately this leads to degrading and false depictions of Cornelia being sexually assaulted.

This portrayal destroys the credibility of claims by the filmmakers that they did not want to make judgements about “goodies and baddies”, and leave such evaluations to the audience.

Having departed from the truth and deliberately falsified Cornelia’s time in Kenja, and her mental health issues, this aspect of the series inevitably degenerates into a degrading and sensationalist B-grade production.
 

Kenja Communication
1 March 2020