Family denounces movie on toddler who drowned while fleeing Syria

‘I’m heartbroken,’ says aunt of Alan Kurdi, who became a global symbol for the refugee crisis after photos emerged of his lifeless body washed ashore on a Turkish beach

MONTREAL, Canada — Family members have sharply denounced a new film about the young Syrian boy who became a symbol of Europe’s migration crisis after wrenching photos emerged of his lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach.

“I’m really heartbroken right now,” Tima Kurdi, an aunt of little Alan Kurdi, told the CBC network. She lives in Port Coquitlam, near Vancouver in western Canada. “It’s unacceptable.”

The boy perished in 2015 along with several other family members fleeing Syria as they tried to reach Greece by boat.

The heartbreaking photo of Alan’s body, face down on a beach, sparked a deep emotional reaction in Europe, pushing the European Union to temporarily open its borders to Syrian refugees.

A paramilitary police officer carries the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi, 3, after a number of migrants died and a smaller number were reported missing after boats carrying them to the Greek island of Kos capsized, near the Turkish resort of Bodrum early Wednesday, September 2, 2015. (AP/DHA)

Tima Kurdi told the CBC in an article posted Friday that no one had asked the family’s permission to make the new movie about her nephew. She said she had learned about it only from the boy’s father, Abdullah Kurdi, who is now living in Iraq.

“He called me and he was crying, too,” she said.

“He said, ‘I can’t believe somebody is already making a movie.’ He said, ‘I cannot even imagine that my dead son — two years old who can’t even talk — I cannot imagine him coming alive'” on film.

The movie, titled “Aylan Baby (Sea of Death),” is being filmed in Turkey, with a cast including American action film star Steven Seagal, the CBC said.

NEW: Omer Sarikaya, the director of a film about the death of Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, says he didn't ask Kurdi's family for permission to make the movie because he says it's about refugees in general, not just Alan. His movie is entitled "Aylan Baby." @cbcnewsbc @CBCAlerts pic.twitter.com/1kAkYQ86xS

— Dan Burritt (@DanBurritt) June 29, 2019

(Initial reporting gave Aylan as the spelling of the boy’s name.)

Tima Kurdi, center, aunt of brothers Alan and Ghalib Kurdi, who died as they fled with their family from Syria, releases a balloon in memory of the boys after a memorial service in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Saturday, September 5, 2015.(Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)

Its Turkish writer/director, Omer Sarikaya, has posted photos of the film’s poster on social media. He hopes to sell the movie to Netflix.

According to Tima Kurdi, who has published a book about her nephew titled “The Boy on the Beach,” the family has turned down several proposals for a film.

Sarikaya, for his part, told CBC that while the theme of his film resembled the story of the Kurdi family, it was much broader in scope, dealing with the overall refugee crisis.

In this image made from video, Abdullah Kurdi, foreground, the Syrian man who survived a capsizing during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece, speaks to reporters from a graveyard after burying his wife and two sons in their hometown of Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish region they fled, on Friday, Sept. 4, 2015. The haunting image of the man’s 3-year-old son, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on Turkish beach focused the world’s attention on the wave of migration fueled by war and deprivation. Aylan drowned along with his 5-year-old brother Galip and his mother, Rehan while trying to reach the island of Kos. (AP Photo via AP video)

“This will be ‘Aylan Baby,’ it will not be ‘Aylan Kurdi,'” he said, adding that it was now too late to change the title.

But one apparently early version of the movie poster seen on Sarikaya’s Instagram account shows the famous boy-on-beach photo under the words “Aylan Kurdi (Sea of Death).”