A Europa é um Jardim
When a young woman is shot by an undocumented immigrant on Pier 14 in San Francisco, the incident ignites a political and media furor that culminates in Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States. In the eye of this storm, two public defenders fight to reveal the truth.
A closely observed portrait of a single man in his 40's who lives in St. Kilda. Although he has none of the trappings of conventional existence, Kelvin's obsessive interest in born again Christianity, physical culture and recent German/Jewish history has given him a way of making sense of the world and led him to a number of people, friends through whom we see something of his life and beliefs.
Pikilina is a Dominican-born woman of Haitian descent. Racial and political violence erupts when the country of her birth, the Dominican Republic, reverses birthright citizenship and she and 200,000 others are left stateless.
Immigrant residents of a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown share their stories of personal and political upheaval. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of the Chinese in the United States through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical movement pieces. Shot in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of Chinatown, this provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life.
Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America is an award-winning 2016 documentary about Moises Serrano, who grew up queer and undocumented in Yadkinville, North Carolina.
A group of children living on the streets of Athens. Among them is Sayid, a twelve-year-old boy, who works all day selling sunflower seeds in the city’s parks and squares. His existence borders on absolute poverty, as he goes looking for food at soup kitchens. His daily routine in the chaotic capital of Greece is a continuous struggle for survival. At the same time, however, he manages to find and enjoy the freedom the city streets can offer. Sayid, along with his friends who are all immigrants from Afghanistan, escape their desperation by clinging onto their hopes. With them, he plays innocent childhood games and dreams of a better future: He wants to leave for Northern Europe, to go to school, and to get a decent job when he grows up. Sayid is trapped in Greece, a country plagued by a financial crisis, increasing unemployment, rampant xenophobia, and racist violence. Sayid doesn’t mince his words: “I’ve been here for about two years, and it feels like twenty.”
A young immigrant arrives in Canada from France, and brings his Citroën 2CV with him. The iconic post-war car stands out on the streets of Vancouver, and before long he meets up with a group of like-minded car buffs.
A documentary from 1987 featuring the life of early Chinese immigrants to the island of Newfoundland.
Biodun is Nigerian. In this animated documentary, he tells the story of his journey on foot from Lagos to Paris, how he survives with a container (un bidon) and thanks to his courage. With his amazing patter, he transforms the events into extraordinary adventures.
In a mesmerizing confessional built from home video and animation, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio explores the mental prisons and personal trauma created by immigration policy.
A documentary about Italian immigration in Brazil.
Teachings of an Issei. Advice, spirituality and challenges.
In Greensboro, NC, a small church community offers sanctuary to Juana Ortega, a Guatemalan grandmother threatened with deportation after 25 years of living and working in the United States.
A film about Princesse, a 9-year-old Cameroonian, and her father, who leaves Africa to make their dreams come true. The two keep in touch through numerous phone calls. Princesse goes to school while her father is trying to make it in Paris cleaning streets and selling souvenirs that enable him to send nice clothes to his daughter – and a smartphone that she’s been begging for.
In 2011, as tens of thousands of migrants, Loss, and Madess Moussa arrived in Europe via Turkey. Required by EU law to remain in Greece, they only want one thing : to leave. Therefore earn the money needed to start is an obsession and all means are good. The film "The Adventure" follows the lives of these three Ivorians to Athens - their sense of enclosure, strategies to find money, failover illegally, attempts to start - and explores what is at stake, individually and collectively during migration: relations to other migrant communities, friendship, betrayal, solidarity, mafias and violence.
Rosa is a Mexican woman who, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. Some years later, she was jailed under suspicion of murder and then taken to trial. This film demonstrates how the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and the helplessness of being imprisoned in a foreign country make Rosa’s story an example of the hard life of Mexican migrants in the United States.
Migrating is seldom an easy solution. It is rather a journey, that begins with a journey. After more than eight years of campaigning, the immigrant cleaners outsourced at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London continue to demand being brought in-house. Limpiadores charts the history of their and others’ campaigns – from winning the London Living Wage to the deportation of nine colleagues, and the day-to-day invisible labour of cleaners on our campus.
This short documentary shows the reactions of European immigrants as they land in Halifax at the beginning of the 1960s. From the port, we follow them on a snowy journey by train to Montreal.
Filmmaker Arturo Perez Torres follows in the footsteps of two friends traveling on an extraordinary and extremely dangerous journey from Central America to North America. On their journey they encounter gangs and vigilantes as well as border patrol. But these immigrants navigate real-life nightmares with uncanny calm, grace and even humor in their perilous pursuit of the a better life.