I Promise You Paradise

Gaza is a 14-year-old boy who lives on the Aegean coast of Turkey. Together with his domineering father, he helps smuggle refugees from war-torn countries to Europe, giving them temporary lodgings and scant food until they attempt the crossing. Gaza dreams of escaping this life, but can't help being drawn into a dark world of immorality, exploitation and human suffering. Can you avoid becoming a monster when you've been raised by one? Onur Saylak's debut feature, adapted from the award-winning novel of the same title by Hakan Günday, one of the first novels to document the refugee crisis in Europe, "More" is the gripping story of a boy that gets to grow up in a world where there's no room for innocence.

A woman reads the newspaper with such intensity that she gets literally devoured by it. Painted on its pages she witnesses some of the tragic events of our times, drowns in ocean trash and is threatened by the elements unleashed by climate change. Yet in her despair she transforms this darkness into movement and art, so she plants the seeds of hope.

The story of an asylum seeker in England who, when confronted with the hostile immigration system in the UK, is forced to live on the fringes of society and rely on his bike to survive. Based on the lived experience of co-writer Ayman Alhussein.

When a Danish family finds themselves on a holiday island, in the midst of the first major refugee crisis in Europe in our time, our northern European, well-intentioned, humanistic values are put to the test.

In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so called “green border” between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life, Jan, a young border guard, and a Syrian family intertwine.

Parvaneh is a young Afghan immigrant who recently arrived at a transit centre for asylum seekers in the Swiss Alps. The only things she has got to know yet are the rural area surrounding the centre and the centre itself.

A widowed Greek fisherman and a teenage refugee form an emotional bond while sailing the azure waters of the Aegean Sea.

A couple decide to open a home for refugees in the remote cold mountains of Norway.

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

Ali is not a citizen. He drives a taxi using another man’s license and relies on the GPS to negotiate his way around a city he doesn’t know. His passenger, Esther is an old woman who can’t remember where she is going. She is angry because she has been stripped of everything that is familiar to her and she doesn't recognise the world anymore. They travel through the night in search of a vague destination while surveillance cameras mark their journey, coldly omitting the human element, defining who belongs and who does not, who is safe and who is not. What they have in common is their damage – she can’t remember and he can’t forget.

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.

In contemporary London, miserly British-Indian businessman Eshan Sood is compelled by three ghosts to reflect on his life and to consider the needs of those around him.

Wendy, a hardened immigration officer is offered a high-profile asylum case, judged on her ability to quickly and clinically reject applicants. Through her interrogation, she must uncover whether Haile is lying and has a more sinister reason for seeking asylum.

Told in a very abstract and poetic way, this love story – set in very unusual circumstances – is inspired by the refugee crisis, in which Macedonia played the unfortunate role of a transit country.

Land of empty promises

An estimated 12 million people live in refugee camps worldwide and only 0.1% are resettled, repatriated, or integrated into normal society each year. The feature-length documentary.

Amid December’s festive glow, refugees remain hidden in forests along the Poland-Belarus border. This powerful documentary gives voice to their silent cries.

‘The Great Wall has been completed at its most southerly point.’ So begins Kafka’s short story ‘At the Building of the Great Wall of China’, and so, at Europe’s heavily militarised south-eastern frontier, begins this film. In the shadow of its own narratives of freedom, Europe has been quietly building its own great wall. Like its famous Chinese precursor, this wall has been piecemeal in construction, diverse in form and dubious in utility. Gradually cohering across the continent, this system of enclosure and exclusion is urged upon a populace seemingly willing to accept its necessity and to contribute to its building.

A story of forbidden love in a dystopian future where teleportation technology enables two refugees to escape genocide. When they trust the wrong back-alley teleporter, Ekaterina and Anya are separated. In a desperate attempt to be reunited, our heroines are entwined in an insidious human trafficking ring involving corrupt politicians.

Part road-movie and part intimate portrait of lives in transit, IT WILL BE CHAOS unfolds between Italy and the Balkan corridor, intercutting two unforgettable refugees stories of human strength and resilience.