Migration

Mahmoud and Fawzi have been living in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. Though they both have no sense of what the future holds for them, they focus their energy together on their first love: soccer. Despite the dire circumstances in the camp, they practice day in and day out, believing firmly that playing professionally is their ticket to freedom. More

Young brothers Max and Leo dream of going to Disneyland, but having just emigrated from Mexico to the USA they first have to settle in their new homeland. And they have to stick to the seven rules their mother has set down for them. More

Sam Ali, a young sensitive and impulsive Syrian, left his country for Lebanon to escape the war. To be able to travel to Europe and live with the love of his life, he accepts to have his back tattooed by one of by the World’s most sulfurous contemporary artist. Turning his own body into a prestigious piece of art, Sam will however come to realize that his decision might actually mean anything but freedom. More

Magdalena hasn’t heard from her son in months—not since he left their town to cross the border into the United States. The authorities want her to sign her son’s death certificate, but an encounter with a bereaved parent makes Magdalena realize that she cannot live without knowing his fate. She begins an odyssey across Mexico, though areas of violence and desolation, chasing any available lead despite being warned not to publicly ask such questions. More

Twelve-year-old Binti dreams of becoming a famous vlogger like her idol Tatyana. But when the police raid her home, and try to deport her and her dad, they are forced to flee. Binti meets Elias and the two become friends. While Binti helps Elias to vlog about his 'save-the-okapi-club', she hatches the perfect plan: her dad has to marry Elias’s mom, so they can stay in Belgium. More

In 2015, after Hassan Fazili’s documentary Peace aired on Afghan national television, the Taliban assassinated the film’s main subject and put a price on Hassan’s head. Hassan looked at his wife and his daughters, and he knew they had to flee their home. Over the course of their multi-year saga in search of safety, the family grasped onto the only means they had to assert control over their situation: their camera-phones. More

Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleiman, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleiman and his co-workers leave the country by sea, in hope of a better future. Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding and a mysterious fever starts to spread. Little does Ada know that Souleiman has returned. More

Rike is forty, she is a successful doctor whose job demands everything of her. She intends to use her much-needed annual holiday to fulfil her long-cherished dream of sailing single-handedly from Gibraltar to Ascension, a small tropical island in the middle of the Atlantic. Her desire for a carefree holiday seems to be coming to pass but then, after a storm, her beautiful adventure suddenly turns into an unprecedented challenge when she spots a badly damaged, hopelessly overloaded refugee boat nearby. More than a hundred people face drowning. More

The border fence between Mexico and the United States is part of their lives; Mexican youths use it as a volleyball net on the beach, holding their own kind of international matches with their opposite numbers on the other side. When Nero scales the metres-high metal bars we suspect that he has done this often before: because nothing is going to divert him from his dream of becoming a US citizen. More

The hope of a better life in Europe comes at a high price. Nigeria is separated from the gateway to Europe on the Moroccan coast by more than 3'000 kilometres. During a journey organised by smugglers through the Sahara, Hope, a young Nigerian, meets Cameroonian refugee Léonard. Although snubbed by him, Hope remains at his heels. She knows that Léonard is the only chance she has of surviving this journey. More

Mired in the nervous desperation of Havana, Raul dreams of escaping to Miami. When accused of assault, his only option is to flee Cuba. He begs his best friend, Elio, to abandon everything and help him reach the forbidden world 90 miles across the ocean. Elio’s commitment is tested when he is torn between protecting his twin sister and his own desire to get out. More

Fatimetu is born to a Sahrawi family in a Saharan refugee camp in Algeria and later sent to live with foster parents in Spain. After the death of her mother she returns to the camp. She has been absent for sixteen years. Her brother now expects her to stay and look after her sister Hayat, who has difficulty walking. Fatimetu, who unlike the other women can drive a car, finds work transporting animals, meat and bread from one administrative district to another. In time, the Sahrawi people become accustomed to the woman who tears about the desert without a hijab in her beaten up jeep. More

Mika Kaurismäki’s documentary about world-famous South African singer Miriam Makeba, who spent half a century travelling the world spreading her political message to fight racism, poverty and promote justice and peace, is a tribute to a woman who embodied the hopes and the voice of Africa as no other. Miriam Makeba (1932-2008) was an inspiration to musicians all over the world and a delight for international audiences. Nonetheless she remainedtrue to her South African musical roots. More

Bethlehem is a neighbourhood in the city of Bern where immigrants from over 30 nations have settled. At the centre of this film is the junior team of the Bethlehem Football Club. In this team, the majority are immigrants between 15 and 16 years old. The film also portrays – along with football – their everyday lives at school, vocational training and leisure time. More

En avril 2006, 13 000 personnes de l’ethnie Dajo se réfugient dans la plaine de Gouroukoun, à l’Est du Tchad. Tous sont des survivants de la guerre du Darfour. Ils y construisent un camp, s’y enferment et s’y inventent une survie. L'auteur s’est enfermé à son tour dans cette prison sans mur. Des images patientes racontent l’interminable temps de l’attente. Une vie au ralenti qui s’égrène, comme suspendue dans le dénuement. More

Anberber has studied in Germany and returns post-graduate to Ethiopia. He is full of hope that he can support his country with his newly acquired knowledge. It's a story about hope and disillusionment, about foreignness and homeland. More

MADRIGAL is dedicated to René Clair. Why? In 1955, this French director made LES GRANDES MANOEUVRES (SUMMER MANOEUVRES), in which Gérard Philipe plays a young officer who accepts a bet that he can win the heart of Michèle Morgan, who plays the most beautiful and mysterious woman in town. Something that begins as a game for this rakish charmer, soon develops into a full-blown passion on both sides that ends dramatically as soon as the woman learns of the deception. Now genuinely in love with her, Gérard Philipe begs her forgiveness. More

The beautiful woman Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work. The couple that lives in Bamako, the capital of Mali, is on the verge of breaking up... In the courtyard of the house, where they live together with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF, whom they blame for Africa's woes... Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights. More

In the northeast of contemporary Morocco, Zeinab, a young wife watches her husband leave the country to go underground the day after their wedding. He's trying to find a job somewhere in Europe. Zeinab is expecting a child and she doesn't know, when her husband will return. While waiting for him she lulls the foetus to sleep: an old tradition of her home. Time goes by and the husband does not come back. She lets her unborn child sleep in her body, hoping that one day the father will come home and she could then give birth to the child. More

The film is set entirely in Greece between 1919 and 1949. It begins with the entry of the Red Army into Odessa and the flight of the Greek community there and ends in 1949 with the end of the Greek civil war. More

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Beijing today. Guei has left his village behind and has come to the city with great expectations. It takes some time, however, before he finds himself a job as a bicycle courier, earning ten yuan for each trip. Should he manage to collect six hundred yuan, he would be in a position to buy his silver mountain bike – his pride and joy – and become its owner. For this reason, Guei doesn’t ever let the odd complaint from a disgruntled customer get him down. He simply accepts it and concentrates on his work. And Lord knows, it’s hard enough. More

Peter travels from Germany to Buenos Aires to find the woman he fell head over heels in love with some time ago and who wants to live with. But he doesn't know much more about her than her name, an address that is no longer true, and the memory of enchanting moments. He meets Olinda, who runs a local restaurant and was herself stranded in Argentina half a century ago in search of her great love. More

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A story of friendship, courage and a politically naive man’s transformation into someone painfully aware of the social realities in contemporary Turkey … Mehmet and Berzan, two young men from different regions of Turkey bond together as lower – class citizens in Istanbul. When Mehmet is unjustly arrested, his frightened roomates evict him and he loses his job. Mehmet’s loyalty to Berzan will eventually force him to disregard an uncompassionate bureaucracy and embark on a journey eastward across Turkey. More

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Martin Echenique is a film director from Buenos Aires who has been living for more than 20 years in Madrid, spending his time with his much younger girlfriend Alicia and his best friend, the actor Dante. He has a 19-year-old son, named according to a tradition Martin as well, but known as Hache. Hache is living with his mother in Buenos Aires. After his girlfriend leaves him, Hache has a nearly fatal drug overdose, thought by many to be an attempted suicide. Consequently Martin flies to Buenos Aires and Hache is sent back to Madrid together with his father for a while. More

An eclectic group of actors struggle to save their theater from being demolished and replaced with a shopping mall. Max, the leader of the troupe, is a workaholic director who abandoned his family to build his career and is forced to confront the daughter he deserted. Then there is Enrique, the playwright-poet who is reduced to pawning his belongings to sustain his livelihood when his state pension is severed. Finally, there is Fulo who is driven to succeed so that she can bring her daughter from Rio de Janeiro. (L. Wong) More

Eternity And A Day traces the final days of Alexandre (Bruno Ganz), a celebrated Greek writer as he prepares to leave his seaside home forever. While packing, he finds a letter from his long-dead wife, Anna (Isabelle Renauld), who wrote about an enchanted summer day they spent thirty years ago. From that point, Alexandre embarks on a mystical journey through his past and present. Realizing that after spending his entire life chasing after the words of poems and novels, Alexandre wants one final chance to capture the lost precious moments of true happiness, even if only for one day. More

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"I dream exactly what I live every day," a professor, bored with her mundane life, tells her therapist. But the visual evidence on screen at the start of "Madagascar" suggests that dreams are never that banal. Bicyclists crowd the street, riding to work in slow motion in a haunting, shadowy blue dawn. The 50-minute "Madagascar" has the resonance and eloquence of the best poetry, as it deftly turns an adolescent's search for identity into a metaphor for post-revolutionary Cuba. Laura is a professor at a shabby, stultifying college. More

«A Place in the World» by Adolfo Aristarain, looks at people who, having fought for a better world, are in the aftermath of defeat. Federico Luppi plays the main character as a teacher who is back from along exile he shared with his doctor wife, Cecilia Roth. Both are living with their teenaged son, Batyi, in a San Luis valley seven hundred miles away from Buenos Aires. While baking bread for his poor pupils, Luppi inspires and leads a community effort aimed at getting fair prices for the farmers' output, sidestepping ruthless landowner Rodolfo Ranm. More

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While working on a story in the border area, a young journalist discovers a divided town bisected by a river which is also the national frontier. He observes a surreal wedding in which the bride and her family stand on one shore and the groom and his relatives on the other, lost under a cold sky: figure in a landscape who only delude themselves that they are masters of the earth and their destiny The town, a remote ghost town, almost forgotten at the end of the world, has been named «waiting room» by the locals because most of its inhabitants are refugees from different More

This film is an homage to the rich an complex history of Latin America. Without any narrative sequence, but with a serie of images, music and sounds, the spectator gets transported through Mexico's history. More

Norbu is a nomad who lives with his wife and his child in the mountainous highland of tibet as a shepherd. He belongs to an ethnic minority and from time to time he sees himself compelled to act as a horse thief in order to provide his family with food. But the day Norbu tries to steal some treasures of a temple the community excludes and banishes him. Living in exile, he loses his son. After his last theft of a horse he sacrifices himself in order to save his wife and his second child. More

Following the revolution, Sergio, an upper middle-class Cuban from Havana finds himself alone when his wife and the rest of his family flee the island to settle down in Miami. Struggling to adjust to the new situation, to the seclusion and the new class relationships, he continues to live his life, goes through a few pathetic love stories, yet is unable to conceal the background that seems so much at odds with the new order. More

The film tells the story of Ishwar Chakraborty, a Hindu refugee from East Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India. He goes to West Bengal with his little sister Sita where he tries to start a new life. In a refugee camp, they see the abduction of a low-caste woman and Ishwar takes her little son Abhiram with him. He gets a job at a factory in the province, near the Subarnarekha River, courtesy his college friend Rambilas. Ishwar, Sita and Abhiram arrive at Chatimpur, a small settlement near Ghatshila where they meet Mukherjee, foreman of the foundry workshop, who greets them with love. More

Komal Gandhar, also known as A Soft Note on a Sharp Scale, refers in its title to the Hindustani equivalent of "E-flat". It was part of the trilogy composed of «Meghe Dhaka Tara» (1960), «Komal Gandhar» and «Subarnarekha» (1962), all dealing with the aftermath of the Partition of India in 1947 and the refugees coping with it, though this was the most optimistic film of his oeuvre. More

The film tells the story of Nita, a beautiful young woman who lives with her family, refugees from East Pakistan, in the suburbs of Calcutta. Nita is a self-sacrificing person who is constantly exploited by everyone around her, even her own family, who take her goodness for granted. Her life is ridden with personal tragedy: she loses first her fiancé, then her job and finally her health by contracting tuberculosis. It is only when she collapses that her family begins to realize what they have done to her. More