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Meet the UEA third years whose documentary made it on Amazon Prime

‘Callum drove the tuk tuk and I ended up accidentally becoming the director of this documentary’


Two UEA third year students have had their documentary 'Europe in a tuk tuk' released on Amazon Prime. Callum Fairhurst, a third year International Development and Politics student, and William Shears a third year Politics and Media student, took to travelling round Europe in a tuk tuk, as an answer back to Brexit, in a bid to show how different each country in the EU really is.

The talented duo, who put the documentary together with the help of a few fellow UEA students, had their very own screening (even with canapes) held at The Forum on Monday, and we asked them a few questions about how on earth they ended up spending the summer driving round Europe in a tuk tuk, and what their favourite place was in the EU.

How did the idea for the documentary come about?

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"So the idea for the documentary first came about when, basically rhe day after Britain decided to leave the Eurpoean Union, we all kept noticing one thing seperately, that everyone treated the EU as just one place, one country, in itself. Actually it's 28, probably soon to be 27 different countries, different languages, different groups of people with a whole vast array of scenery.

"So I decided that I wanted to see every single one of those countries and learn a bit more about the European Union, outside what we kept hearing on the news. So the documentary is on just that. Trying to show the European Union in a fun, interesting light, it doesn't just have to be all about politics."

Will added: “Callum drove the tuk tuk and I ended up accidentally becoming the director of this documentary.”

What was the most challenging thing about making the documentary?

"I think the most challenging thing – I think that's a really hard question. I think when the tuk was being a bit more temperamental than we wanted it to. We broke down in Austria – you can actually see that in the film. I'd say the most challenging time was going through countries that weren't part of the Schengen zone.

"So the Schengen zone is the essentially a land of free movement of people and trade, pretty much. I don't think we experience one border check – you could pretty much just drive across the border, free movement of people.

"Whenever we entered a country that wasn't part of the Schengen we had to get out our passports etc. and there'd be a million and one questions. Actually in Hungary, which wasn't in the Schengen, we were actually chucked out, because they didn't think the tuk tuk was legal there.

So it's actually just a nightmare – countries not in the schengen."

What was the biggest thing you learnt on your travels?

"The biggest thing we learnt was how generous people were and actually one of the realy interesting things was what people thought about the Brexit. Lots of people agreed with the Brexit, and lots of people totally disagreed with it. So that was really interesting, hearing what people had to say.

What was your favourite place you got to go to?

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"Favourite place I visited was definitely Sweden, I'd say. Largely as a result of that we could camp out anywhere wanted to, it's so naturally beautiful.

Lakes where we could just pitch up our tents and go swimming in the morning."

Sounds blissful, and a hell of a lot of fun.

You can watch 'Europe in a tuk tuk' now, on Amazon Prime.