The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.
A nine-year-old Syrian refugee girl contemplates her increasingly bleak future after being forced to drop out of school in the midst of Lebanon’s unprecedented economic collapse and battle with Covid-19.
In the aftermath of war, an extraordinary professor brings hope to children haunted by trauma-induced nightmares.
Hum lives in a refugee camp near Hamburg. He loves films and finances his visits to the cinema by selling lost properties from cinema visits in the refugee camp. One day he meets Anna and her friend Ida. At a dinner together in the shared flat of the two, they find out that they all share a love of music. Anna and Ida can sing great together and Hum shares the contact with his friends who play in a band. A timid and touching love story develops between Hum and Anna. Both are looking forward to the first performance of the band, in which Anna now sings. But shortly before the performance, Hum is to be deported. Neither his love for Anna and music nor his imagination can save him from the everyday life of a refugee.
REFUGEE CONVERSATIONS / PAKOLAISKESKUSTELUJA is a 90-minute documentary film. Its themes are: refugees, racism, xenophobia, Islam, Christianity and compassion — or the lack of it. What is the meaning and role of these in Finland, a country which according to many studies is the happiest country in the world?
Before an office complex is set to be demolished, it expresses one last wish: a love story. It centers around desire, security, and a melody that runs through the entire fabric of the building. So when darkness descends and everything falls silent, the routine lives of those within its walls sparkle like stars, paving the way for intimate chance encounters and absurd humor to unfold. A nocturnal kaleidoscope of longing, loneliness and freedom.
Documentary Film maker, Mark Brown, attempts to discover the damaging effect the over-spilling immigrant population has on the coastal city of Calais, France.
A film about the unprecedented Swiss grassroots movement of regular citizens who rise to aid thousands of refugees stranded at the European borders. In rich and safe Switzerland people from all backgrounds leave their regular life behind to support people in need. There is a Swiss farmer and his wife who keep cows in the Swiss Alps, a former commander of the Swiss Army, an elder rich lady residing at the lakeside, and a successful comedian and entertainer. These unexperienced volunteers take on an adventure that will change their lives forever.
Powerfully and heartbreakingly detailing the challenging process that LGBTQ refugees must go through to find safety and security while starting over in the US, Tom Shepard’s inspiring new documentary profiles four people who have come to San Francisco to save their own lives. Over the course of this unforgettable group portrait, Subhi (from Syria), Junior (from Congo), and Mari and Cheyenne (from Angola) experience roadblocks and triumphs as they reflect on their respective histories and try to create a home for themselves in an environment that is not always welcoming. Once in San Francisco, they are met with setbacks but each maintains hope for a better future – Mari and Cheyenne record an album, Subhi starts a tour speaking on behalf of Syrian refugees and finds love, while Junior faces challenges of homelessness and gender non-conformance.
Anna, a young photojournalist from Berlin, travels to Serbia to make a photo documentary about refugees. Upon her arrival to Belgrade, Serbia's capital, Anna finds out that she can't go about her task the way she had planned. Through the cabdriver Dzeki, she meets the distrustful but interesting young refugee Maja who works at a nearby fast food restaurant. Miserable with her life in Serbia, Maja dreams of a new beginning somewhere abroad. In an attempt to successfully finish her project, Anna starts photographing Maja, secretly making a documentary about her. Blinded by the wish to change her life, Maja doesn't realize Anna's true intentions.
12-year-old Dyab is a Kurdish Yazidi boy living at Arbat refugee camp, after the horrendous attacks by the Islamic States on their villages at Shingal Mountains (Sinjar). However, Dyab’s dream is, to become a filmmaker and actor and tell the stories and sufferings of his people to the outside world.
A first-hand account of the perilous journey made by a group of Syrian refugees. Traversing land and sea on an old fishing boat manned by smugglers, the nail-biting journey leads to Europe where the refugees disperse. Each must battle to stay sane and create an identity among the maze of regulations and refugee hostels. The Crossing shows us the lengths to which people go to find safety and forge their own destiny.
The fate of thousands of people is unified under the tarpaulins of the refugee camps in Kobanê and in Shingal. Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi has given eight children the opportunity to use a camera to tell their own stories. Each film gives us a glimpse into the plight of the children, as seen through their own eyes. Their stories tell of young people with their whole lives ahead of them, though they’ve already lost almost everything. At a certain point, the film crew leaves the camp and follows the 13-year-old Mahmod and his sister in the search for his parent‘s house in Kobanê. The town has been ravaged by the war and all the children find is rubble. The eight films reveal the courage and openness of the young filmmakers, who share their stories with great intensity, realism and poetry, despite their harsh fate.
Algerian children, survivors of the war and refugeeing in Tunisian camps, recount the tragic events they have experienced, from drawings they have made themselves.
Greece is in crisis. But the economic crisis is not the only one. An asylum crisis has gripped the country at this time of severe austerity. And it hits the most vulnerable: Refugees, including minors, who have left everything behind fleeing their countries to find safety. In Greece, they are left destitute and on the streets, unable to apply for asylum and threatened by escalating racist attacks. Trapped in Greece, they have one message for Europe and the rest of the world: Let us leave!
While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.
A lonely boy, who lives in Amsterdam with his refugee mother from Kosovo, keeps getting into trouble while yearning for her acceptance. But the traumas caused by the war, which his mother hides away from him, turn his world upside down.
Zain, a 12-year-old boy scrambling to survive on the streets of Beirut, sues his parents for having brought him into such an unjust world, where being a refugee with no documents means that your rights can easily be denied.
