The Age of the Stateless

Vengo Volviendo tells the story of Ismael, who was raised by his grandmother and seeks to leave Ecuador in order to migrate to the United States. Along the way, he encounters a host of interesting people and learns of some interesting tales.

Tahir Agha sells all his assets when his business in Maraş deteriorates. He immigrates to Istanbul with his wife Hatice, sons Selim, Murat, Kemal and daughter Fatoş, where he sets his mind to open a repair shop. But in the metropolis, things don't go as planned.

Soriba Samb is a Senegalese who has just received a much sought after internship to study filmmaking in Paris. Soriba heads to Paris, accompanied by the five-year old son of a friend who he believes to be still living in Paris. On arrival he struggles to find the boy’s father. In addition to coping with his new internship, Soriba has to also spend time tracking down the boy’s father ‘Issa’.

Shin-ae moves to her recently late husband’s hometown. Despite her efforts to settle in this unfamiliar and too-normal place, she finds that she can’t fit in. After a sudden tragedy, Shin-ae turns to Christianity to relieve her pain, but when even this is not permitted, she wages a war against God.

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.

The story of Alex, who, with the help of his charismatic grandfather, embarks on a journey in search of his real self.

An unwanted pregnancy triggers the journey into adulthood for Makenya, a Dominican-Haitian teenager who lives in the Batey, a community surrounded by sugarcane fields.

Originally edited in two versions. Version I, 70 minutes; version II, 90 minutes. (The only known existing version is not Markopoulos’s edit and contains additional titles, music and voice-over added later than 1961. 65 minutes.) Filmed in Mytilene and Annavysos, Greece, 1958. Existing copy on video, J. and M. Paris Films, Athens.

A man encounters colorful characters while driving a taxi in Papua New Guinea.

Sebastián is from Venezuela and arrives at a shelter for migrant minors in Mexico City. There he meets Aurora, a girl from Guatemala, with whom he falls in love. Both are waiting for a response to their asylum application. Time is running out and the farewell is inevitable.

LEI and WONG clandestinely arrive to Ecuador, on their way to the port city of Guayaquil. From here LEI plans to continue her journey to New York, but CHANG, a bipolar mobster will decide her fate. WONG unwillingly gets entangled in the web of corruption that operates the encroachment of Chinese immigrants. His only objective is to bring his twelve-year-old son from China.

Nineteen year old Imri, a handsome ex-soldier, suffers from “Yellow Fever”. He was born in Israel but yearns to live in Japan.

An epic love story spanning decades is sparked by a chance encounter between two men in provincial Mexico. Based on a true story, ambition and societal pressure propel an aspiring chef to leave his soulmate and make the treacherous journey to New York, where life will never be the same.

Magdalena makes a journey to find her missing son, who disappeared on his way to the border with the United States. Accompanied only by her will and her memories, Magdalena enters a violent and desolated territory, the migration route in Mexico.

Sister Tse is brought to New York by a Snakehead, a human smuggler. Although she is indebted to the crime family responsible for her transport, her survival instincts help her gain favor with the matriarch, and she rises quickly in the ranks. Soon Tse must reconcile her success with her real reason for coming to America—to find the child that was taken from her. In the end, Sister Tse must draw on the strength she found in transforming her victimhood into power.

Based on the famous novel of Milos Crnjanski, the story follows Serbian migrations from the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the XVIII century.

Inés discovers that she has a half-sister, but, faced with the situation, decides to accept silence as a family truce.

Speechless

Released from prison and terminally ill, Parvis Karimpour is determined to be reunited with his daughter, Nasrin, who fled Iran for Europe many years before. Crossing the Mediterranean only to be unceremoniously dumped on the Spanish coast, Karimpour makes for Madrid in search of his erstwhile only child. Along the way he meets failed Italian pianist Fabrizio and spoilt German dreamer Almut – fellow migrants struggling to make their way in a Europe beset by economic turmoil. The search for Nasrin lends Karimpour’s new friends a sense of purpose, and the unlikely threesome take up her trail.

Longing for a brighter future, two Senegalese teenagers embark on a journey from West Africa to Italy. However, between their dreams and reality lies a labyrinth of checkpoints, the Sahara Desert, and the vast waters of the Mediterranean.