In the winter of 1938, Paris is crowded with refugees from the Nazis, who live in the black shadows of night, trying to evade deportation. One such is Dr. Ravic, who practices medicine illegally and stalks his old Nazi enemy Haake with murder in mind. One rainy night, Ravic meets Joan Madou, a kept woman cast adrift by her lover's sudden death. Against Ravic's better judgment, they become involved in a doomed affair.
A little girl is told by her parents that she is adopted. Determined to find her birth mother, her family eventually agrees to take her to Sri Lanka, where they encounter the militant group known as the Tamil Tigers.
Mohammad is a young asylum seeker from Pakistan. To make a living, he works illegally as a night delivery worker. He strives for a better life in a city with no identity and future in store for him. Despite his limited income, Mohammad helps out the single mother and her young son from Africa. He spends his days with his compatriots looking for jobs and waiting for their application results, hoping indefinitely for a miracle. Marginalized and ostracized, they survive in cracks and crevices of the city, trembling with rage and despair, waiting for dawn to come.
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.
A troupe of clowns gather to perform a story about a priest and a refugee, but as their misguided tale unfolds, the boundaries between fiction and reality begin to fray.
"The Boy Of The Fish" follows Noon, a young boy living in a Syrian refugee camp, who finds solace and a sense of freedom in a whale-shaped doll he names "Bahr." Set against the challenging realities of camp life, Noon’s journey is both a story of resilience and a testament to the boundless imagination of childhood. Through vivid symbolism and a unique soundscape, the film explores themes of loss, hope, and the longing for freedom amidst confinement. Shot entirely on an iPhone due to restrictions in the conflict zone, the film combines raw authenticity with poetic depth to capture the emotional landscape of a young soul navigating adversity.
After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.
We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.
Orphaned in Africa as a child, Lilly escapes to England as a refugee, fleeing civil war in Ethiopia. Lost in this cold new world, Lilly embraces the immigrant community in London, attempting to reunite people with their scattered families. But as her friend Amina discovers, Lilly's mission isn't purely selfless: a passionate lost love affair is revealed.
After living undocumented in the UK for two years, Nigerian migrant Isio is caught and sent to the Hatchworth Removal Centre. She hopes for a fair asylum hearing and is convinced that, as long as she strictly follows the rules, she will be released – even if her charismatic new roommate Farah tells her this is a naive mistake.
Aporia tells the story of someone caught in the midst of cultural, religious, ethnic, and national conflict. After fleeing Syria, Haleem hopes to bring his wife and children and settle in Germany. During a layover in South Korea, he is found in possession of a fake passport. Haleem then finds himself struggling in an unfamiliar country, taking illegal and illicit work in the hopes of being reunited with his family…
An American newspaperman and his wife, end up in London after several retreats in the opening days of WWII. After a shrapnel wound and loss of her baby she returns to America. War weary, he is forced to do a story about war orphans, where he meets Margaret.
Acclaimed director Abolfazl Jalili offers a compassionate story of the young Afghan refugee who lives illegally in Iran. 14-year-old Kaim drifts to the Delbaran crossing on the Afghan-Iran border, where he finds work at a coffee shop frequented by truck drivers. He feels at home in this small oasis of friendliness, though the sounds of war can be heard in the background, violent bandits prowl the roads, and opium is everywhere. As we watch Kaim run from one task to another day after day, we soon realize that we are watching a boy who is being cheated out of his childhood.
Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais
Eight year-old Adam confronts a mutated world, when he breaks out of the designated quarantine area for refugees.
Fact-based World War II story set on Christmas Eve, 1944, finds a German Mother and her son seeking refuge in a cabin on the war front. When she is invaded by three American soldiers and then three German soldiers, she successfully convinces the soldiers to put aside their differences for one evening and share a Christmas dinner.
From war-torn Syria to the 2016 Rio Olympics, two young sisters embark on a risky voyage, putting their hearts and their swimming skills to heroic use.
Rocky is a talented boxer, but is forced to quit boxing for being an asylum seeker. Rocky starts a new life when his coach tries to build him a career and life while staying afloat in Hong Kong. Helping with moving and volunteer work, he gets to know other tenants like Raja and Bitto and hears about their life stories. He realises that they have nothing left but he still has boxing - and that calling has never stopped.
Amal, a 13-year-old refugee from Lebanon, deals drugs in the Hannover subway system. He lives an isolated life in an asylum home outside the city...
July 1972 in Iran. Mohammed is arrested for illegal spreading of flyers. He is put in jail and tortured. After one year he is released and flees to Sweden. He arrives at a refugee camp where he is taught Swedish. He is surrounded by people without hope.