Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.
The Ta'ang or Palaung people, an ethnic minority living in the mountainous area between Myanmar's Kokang region and China's Yunnan province, have historically suffered many forced migrations due to war. When their survival is threatened again in 2015, thousands of them flee across the border. Filmmaker Wang Bing accompanies them and becomes a privileged witness to a human story that is both a modern reportage and a mythical epic.
12-year-old Dyab is a Kurdish Yazidi boy living at Arbat refugee camp, after the horrendous attacks by the Islamic States on their villages at Shingal Mountains (Sinjar). However, Dyab’s dream is, to become a filmmaker and actor and tell the stories and sufferings of his people to the outside world.
Close to 80,000 Syrian refugees live in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, the second-largest such camp in the world. Fifty-eight percent of its inhabitants are children. After Spring immerses us in the rhythms of the camp, the role of the aid workers, and the daily lives of two families as they contemplate an uncertain future.
The Channel Tunnel linking Britain with France is one of the seven wonders of the modern world but what did it take to build the longest undersea tunnel ever constructed? We hear from the men and women, who built this engineering marvel. Massive tunnel boring machines gnawed their way through rock and chalk, digging not one tunnel but three; two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. This was a project that would be privately financed; not a penny of public money would be spent on the tunnel. Business would have to put up all the money and take all the risks. This was also a project that was blighted by flood, fire, tragic loss of life and financial bust ups. Today, it stands as an engineering triumph and a testament to what can be achieved when two nations, Britain and France put aside their historic differences and work together.
After having fled Pol Pot, Rithy Panh, a 15 year old Cambodian finds refuge at the Mairut camp in Thailand, in 1979. Ten years later, now a filmmaker, he returns to the camps to film the daily life of this threatened people. The peoples he meets, eaten away by inactivity, insecutity and the fear of being forgotten, have been waiting for a possible return to Cambodia.
On Our Doorstep delves deep into an aspect of the refugee crisis that rarely reached the press. With NGOs being blocked by red tape and the absence of any positive action by French or British authorities, the film is a behind-the-scenes look at the unprecedented grassroots movement that rose to aid the refugees in Calais, and the community that sprang up there, before it was forcefully demolished. This is the story of what happens when young and inexperienced citizens are forced to devise systems and structures to support 10,000 refugees; and are left unguided to face the moral and emotional conflicts, blurred lines and frequent grey areas of giving aid to vulnerable people. People who do not want to be there. It questions whether the aims of the volunteers were met, and whether these aims ultimately served the refugees' needs.
Claire Denis goes to Eastern Chad to the Breidjing camp, the home of 40,000 refugees from Darfur. With great humility, she tells the stories of these men and women, victims of one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes that this century has seen so far.
Takes place in the Saharawi refugee camps in Algeria against the historical backdrop of Spanish colonialism and the Moroccan invasion of the Western Sahara. The Saharawi women, who make up 80% of the adult refugee population, provide a powerful voice as they reveal how they came to assume primary responsibility for the survival of the remains of their families and in turn the entire refugee population.
Directed by Pierre Clément and Djamel-Eddine Chanderli, produced by the FLN Information Service in 1958, this film is a rare document. Pierre Clément is considered one of the founders of Algerian cinema. In this film he shows images of Algerian refugee camps in Tunisia and their living conditions. A restored DVD version released in 2016, from the 35 mm original donated by Pierre Clément to the Contemporary International Documentation Library (BDIC).
A very personal and dynamic meditation on the current global refugee crisis through the eyes and voices of campaigners, specially children, where past and present establish a dialogue. A reflection on the importance of human rights.
Rafi, Salman, Said and Ali are all under 18 years old. They come from Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan. After months of wandering, fleeing wars in their country, they found themselves stuck in Calais, where they are trying to survive, waiting for something better. Their dream: to get to England. How? By climbing into containers or slipping onto the axles of trucks, risking their lives. Who cares about these isolated minors in the Calais Jungle, the largest slum in Europe?
Within a few months, the Kutupalong refugee camp has become the biggest in the world. Out of sight, 700,000 people of the Rohingya Muslim minority fled Myanmar in 2017 to escape genocide and seek asylum in Bangladesh. Prisoners of a major yet little publicized humanitarian crisis, Kalam, Mohammad, Montas and other exiles want to make their voice heard. Between poetry and nightmares, food distribution and soccer games, they testify to their daily realities and the ghosts of their past memories. Around them, the spectre of wandering, waiting, disappearing. In this place almost out of space and time, is it still possible to exist?
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.
Ekhlas Alhlwani was forced to flee Syria with her three children and now lives in Zaatari, a refugee camp in the Jordanian desert. Rizzi spent seven weeks observing her and other women's daily life, which is devoid of any prospects. He shows how Alhlwani makes every effort to establish some kind of normality for her family despite the difficult camp conditions. The film vividlyconveys the cruelty of war, and especially the state o funcertainty and rootlessness to which refugees are exposed. The film is the first part of a trilogy that focuses on the emergence of a new civil consciousness in Malaysia, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Syria, as well as the social implications of the end of post-colonialism in these countries.
Interviews with Palestinians living in Lebanese refugee camps, some of it shot in Sabra and Shatila before the massacre.
Milena, a young woman from Ukraine, who along with her mother and grandmother (and cat), desperately struggle to escape their war- torn home while an army of supporters on the opposite side of the world fight to keep them safe. Milena survived the destruction of Mariupol, cowering for a month in the basement of a bombed-out building, watching her home and history burn. She managed to contact Ken Pontac, long-time Facebook friend and father figure. Their conversations bolstered Milena's spirits while Ken listened with growing apprehension.
During the Syrian civil war, the district of Yarmouk, home to thousands of Palestinians, became the scene of dramatic and ferocious fighting. Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege) is a film that follows the destiny of civilians during the brutal sieges, imposed by the Syrian regime, that took place in the wake of the battles. With his camera, Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that proudly resists the atrocities of war.
La vie devant elle is the diary of the exile of Elaha, a 14 year old Afghan girl, who films herself with a small camera to tell her story. Through her story, the film portrays the reality of children growing up on the road, tossed from place to place to flee conflicts in the hope of finding a normal life.
A harrowing account of Europe's migrant crisis. A family of Syrian refugees separated by the borders of Europe, fight to be reunited as they migrant from Syria to Germany.