texts themselves, but also our understanding of the political practice at work in asylum regimes everywhere. The politics of narrative is central to both the law and the documentary film I discuss here as case studies; the entire asylum process is informed by its entanglement with a number of legal, political and cultural levels. In addressing the intersections of the legal, documentary and theoretical texts, therefore, I underscore the narrative dimensions of the texts proper as a way to bring nuance not only to the legal processes and the documentary, and their