The Photograph

Nabil has to deal with his fear of water caused by a trauma he had, which he tries, day after day, to fight.

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.

Struggling with the move to Australia, a father concedes that he might not be the only one having a hard time with the transition.

A young man receiving medical treatment in the hospital reminisces about fishing in the small dory his grandfather owned.

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.

A former war photographer tries to ward off his personal ghosts by taking pictures of trees only. He lives alone among olive trees in southern Italy. One day he decides to cross the sea. Once in Albania, he goes near the location where he had made his last war picture, as if he was retracing his steps. He finds a tree he wants to photograph. He is just about to do so, when he discovers a runaway girl hiding in it with the sole objective of crossing the sea and getting to the other side. The man has no choice. He has to flee with her, follow her and guide her along until a storm separates them.

On a ferry travelling towards Lampedusa, we find a teenager on his first day of work as a gravedigger and a boy on his first mission as a diver. They do not know each other, but when they will set foot on the island, both their lives will change forever: one has to retrieve the bodies of drowned shipwreck victims, the other one has to bury them. A sort of dance between life and death, innocence and its loss.

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.

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

A man and his dog cross the desert in search of La Frontera, a mighty river that represents the geographical limit with the neighboring territory. Exhausted, they manage to see their goal, but they must cross other obstacles before conquering its waters.

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.

Stephen Tan, the youngest and the only photographer in his family, is tasked with creating his grandmother's funeral portrait. Never having taken his grandmother's photograph, he searches for old photographs in his family's ancestral home. There, he finds his Aunt Ellen who is hastily preparing for the wake later the same day. As the clock ticks closer to the funeral, a mishap in the house catches them off guard, opening up sentiments long left in the past.

During a random check, the commander of the Czech Customs Unit notices that there are immigrants in the back of a van. In the turmoil that followed, a minor is injured while trying to escape into the forest. The officers scatter the woods to look for the boy who managed to escape. Their aim is to find him and cover up the event. When the child's father refuses to cooperate, the incident becomes insurmountable and the officers start to mistreat the refugees. It is a fairly harsh short film about human emotions and views against immigrants.

A refugee's dinner routine is transformed when she begins to hear the voices of those she has lost. Based on a short story by Syrian writer Jehan Sayed Issa.

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.

The story of Masoud, who is trying to emigrate to Europe to make a better life for himself, his mother and his fiancé. After embarking on a difficult and dangerous immigration journey with his best friend, Masoud meets a pregnant doctor and an old man on the way and they band together. Having to flee because of war and terror, Masoud tries to reach his goal with a hopeful but painful journey.

La línea

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.

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.

The protagonists of this docudrama are old farmers who migrated to Banat after the First World War, in 1922. The film is focused on a couple of important events in their impressive lives, which are woven into lively scenes and stories full of wise instances. Their statements become spontaneous recounts of the lives of people in this region.