Un viaje hacia nosotros

Successful model Samira Hashi makes an emotional return to Somalia, one of the most dangerous places in the world and the place she was born. Civil war broke out in 1991, 10 days after Samira's birth, but two years later her family managed to flee the country and she grew up in the UK.Now, as Samira and the war both turn 21, she's going back for the first time to visit the people and places she left behind. The contrast with her safe and glamorous life in London could not be starker as she experiences firsthand the war's effect on a generation of young people growing up in conflict.

Here in Toronto, four young Somali refugees are finishing high school. What did they bring with them? What did they find in Canada? Their testimonies, about us and about themselves, interspersed with newsreel footage and sequences of a theatrical creation in which they put all their soul, make them immediately endearing and overturn many prejudices held against refugees. A film that makes you want to get to know them better.

A prominent Czech journalist Saša Uhlová leaves her family and joins “cheap labour force” in Western Europe. Undercover, she works at an asparagus farm in Germany, tries her hand as a maid at a hotel in Ireland and takes care of the elderly in France. She experiences first-hand the struggles of Eastern European low-wage workers whose sacrifice and hard work allow for the Western society’s comfort. What is the real price that Europe pays for exploiting its own citizens? How do the lives of economic migrants, who have been forced to leave their children and elderly parents, look like? And why are privileged Europeans looking the other way?

After 11 strangers unite to help a gay youth escape life-threatening violence in Uganda, the unexpected pandemic and conflicting opinions over his best interests test the limits of their commitment and jeopardize his fresh start in Canada.

A cell phone was the only thing that kept Yonas, an Eritrean refugee, connected to Jérôme, the French journalist who wanted to tell his story. They met in Libya in 2019, in the abyss of a detention center. Yonas managed to escape and attempted several times to cross the Mediterranean. Like many others who jump from one hell to another, Yonas's only option was to flee forward, and what lay before him was a small boat. Yonas's News chronicles the epic journey in which his life was at stake, summarized in the WhatsApp and voice messages, photos, and videos he was able to exchange with Jérôme. Jérôme Tubiana, journalist, researcher, and member of Doctors Without Borders, has visited Libya five times between 2018 and 2020.

The political upheaval in North Africa is responsibility of the Western powers —especially of the United States and France— due to the exercise of a foreign policy based on practical and economic interests instead of ethical and theoretical principles, essential for their international politic strategies, which have generated a great instability that causes chaos and violence, as occurs in Western Sahara, the last African colony according to the UN, a region on the brink of war.

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.

Filmed in the camps of Sahrawi refugees living in West-Algeria and Tifaritti (the liberated territory). The narrator, in his multiple interviews, examines the reality of these people who have been condemned to silence in exile. This is a direct and concise documentary that gives the refugees the opportunity to express themselves, as well as hearing from other people implicated in the conflict.

Documentary about the arduous early years of the Sahrawi cause (1977)

Straddling a 2,400-kilometer-long wall constructed by the Moroccan army, the Western Sahara is today divided into two sections — one occupied by Morocco, the other under the control of the Sahrawi National Liberation Movement’s Polisario Front. Drawing from stories of flight, exile, interminable waiting and the arrested, persecuted lives on both sides of that wall, this film bears witness to the Sahrawi people, their land, their entrapment in other people’s dreams. In an esthetic that sublimates the real, Lost Land resonates like a score that juxtaposes sonorous landscapes, black-and-white portraits and nomadic poetics.

Eighteen-year-old Shahnura is about to graduate from high school. Her mother spends hours at the dining table while Shahnura is at school, wondering if her mother, sister, and brother are still alive. Living in Germany without a passport or nationality, she listens to the harrowing stories of her mother and two friends who have experienced imprisonment and re-education camps in China. These accounts reveal the suffering, human rights abuses, forced adoptions, and the grim reality of the camps where the predominantly Muslim Turkic Uyghurs are tortured and mistreated.

'Migrating Fears' is a docu-drama on the sentiments around migration, both from the side of the refugees and asylum-seekers as well as from the perspective of these segments of society that appear hesitant towards migration. Trying to understand 'migrating fears', the film follows Solon Solomon, a law professor, in his London quests and interactions with refugees, politicians and psychologists, as he comes to see the fear in the refugees' eyes and the worries of the locals, ultimately creating dialogues between the two groups.

A U.S. Marine plots a terrorist attack on a small-town American mosque, but his plan takes an unexpected turn when he comes face to face with the people he sets out to kill.

Atil, a documentary on the life of the Saharawis in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria. In the camps there are no limits, since creativity and innovation give rise to ideas that succeed in changing the world. As a result, this documentary presents five young Saharawis who show day by day that anything is possible, despite the difficulties. They are all examples of perseverance. Discover a place where hope is never lost.

Tebraa is the song of the women of the Sahara desert. Songs of love or lamentation that they sing when they are alone. This collective documentary made by a group of Andalusian women tells the life and injustices that Sahrawi women experience in the adverse conditions of exile and in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.

Through images and testimonies of Sahrawi women, this film introduces us to the situation and the living conditions the Sahrawi people have been subjected to since, in 1975, Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco and thousands of men, women and children were forced to flee and look for refuge in Algerian territory, in the inhumane "hamada" (rocky desert) of Tindouf. Sahrawi women, exiled to the refugee camps of Tindouf since 1975, have been the driving force behind a genuine revolution in all areas of Sahara society. They have carried out the miracle of reviving the spirit of a devastated community in the middle of a hostile, rocky desert.

A boy has a dream of traveling to the world, especially to Paris where his uncle lives, but a wall built on his land divides his country and does not allow him to travel or cross to the other side of his land.

The film offers an insight into a nearly forgotten world. The times when the Sahrawi war of independence was on the international agenda seem to be long forgotten. The fate of hundreds of thousands Sahrawis living in refugee camps since the 1970s seems not to be spectacular enough for further attention. Inthe film the women get a chance to speak. It is a film about their experiences and hopes. It is mainly a film about life in surroundings where seemingly normal things are real challenges. The film is a simple and impressive portrait of women, who have been fighting against their fate to help their people. They have never lost their drive, no matter how unfavourable the circumstances have been. It reminds us of the fate of the Sahrawi people. The film is realistic, without any kitsch elements. It shows impressive pictures of the real lives of strong women, who have never stopped fighting for independence.

Women are the protagonists of this documentary. Girls and women of varied ages tell us the difficulties of living their whole lives in refuge and their desires for the future.

28-year-old Azman, a student in the film school Abidin Kaid Saleh, explains how he discovered film in the Sahrawi refugee camps, the difficulties he had explaining his choice of study to his family, and how his society views this career.