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.
A Sense of Justice, immerses us In a law firm in this same city. There, we can find Christine Mengus and Nohra Boukara, specialized in the rights of foreigners, supported by Audrey Scarinoff and their co-workers.. Stories from their sad, appalling or tragicomic cases alternate with their daily legal work. And as we hear snatches of consultations involving illegal entry or departure, deportation orders, the right to reside or medical assistance, we become witnesses to predictable tragedies, to the administrative or social precariousness induced by such predicaments, and to whole lives depending on court rulings.
A first-hand account of the perilous journey made by a group of Syrian refugees. Traversing land and sea on an old fishing boat manned by smugglers, the nail-biting journey leads to Europe where the refugees disperse. Each must battle to stay sane and create an identity among the maze of regulations and refugee hostels. The Crossing shows us the lengths to which people go to find safety and forge their own destiny.
Three generations of the Nabi family flee their home in Aleppo and try to make it to safety in Germany where some members of the family have already settled. Along the way they suffer countless setbacks and heartache.
REFUGEE CONVERSATIONS / PAKOLAISKESKUSTELUJA is a 90-minute documentary film. Its themes are: refugees, racism, xenophobia, Islam, Christianity and compassion — or the lack of it. What is the meaning and role of these in Finland, a country which according to many studies is the happiest country in the world?
Hum lives in a refugee camp near Hamburg. He loves films and finances his visits to the cinema by selling lost properties from cinema visits in the refugee camp. One day he meets Anna and her friend Ida. At a dinner together in the shared flat of the two, they find out that they all share a love of music. Anna and Ida can sing great together and Hum shares the contact with his friends who play in a band. A timid and touching love story develops between Hum and Anna. Both are looking forward to the first performance of the band, in which Anna now sings. But shortly before the performance, Hum is to be deported. Neither his love for Anna and music nor his imagination can save him from the everyday life of a refugee.
Rotem Genossar, a teacher at the Bialik-Rogozin campus in south Tel Aviv, founds a running group for his students, young African refugees whose families fled their homeland and now live in Israel without any legal status. At first running is just a social activity for the students, but it quickly becomes a means to fight for their civil rights, part of a struggle to secure them a place of their own, out of the margins of Israeli society.
The construction of a boat on the island of Anjouan, used to transport migrants over 70km to the island of Mayotte – the outermost region of the European Union.
When Ader Ismail fled from Somalia to Sweden, she thought it would not take long for her five children to join her. But the years go by and the children get rejection after rejection from the Swedish Migration Board. Ader unable to reveal this to her children. She just tells them: "See you soon!". Video journalist Clary Kroon follows Aders' struggle and tries to understand her decision. She also meets Aders' children who live as refugees in Nairobi, thousands of miles from their mother.
Jasim and Alsaleh are underage refugees in a Greek prison. Coming from Syria and Iraq, they were arrested and accused of smuggling illegal immigrants. With unique access in the juvenile prison and court room, the film follows the two friends closely while in custody, during the trial and after the verdict, through a narrative of suspense which reveals how youngsters are forced to transport migrants across the border to Greece while the smugglers stay behind and continue their job uninterrupted. If Jasim and Alsaleh are found guilty, they will face extremely long prison sentences. Phone conversations between the imprisoned young boys and their mothers at their war-stricken countries accentuate the double enclosure that these families experience. No one knows how and when their long run will end.
In the autumn of 2015, Finnish-Iranian Ali Jahangiri wanted to personally experience the reality faced by refugees in Europe. Ali travelled across Europe to Finland with refugees who had landed in Greece. Unknown refugee is an authentic documentary of encounters that are not covered by the news.
Draussen bleiben
Chasing Asylum tells the story of Australia's cruel, inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, examining the human, political, financial and moral impact of current and previous policy.
This documentary explores the history of Canada’s first major migration of non-European and non-white refugees who arrived in 1972 when Ugandan President Idi Amin expelled all South Asians from the country. Their story of struggle and hope became part of Canada’s conversations about refugees and cultural pluralism, and informed the Canadian response to future refugee movements.
Richard Fairbrass goes behind the scenes of the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest.
Europas dreckige Ernte
In northern Morocco lies the Spanish enclave of Melilla: Europe on African Land. On the mountain above live over a thousand hopeful African migrants, watching the land border, a fence system separating Morocco and Spain. Abou from Mali is one of them – the protagonist in front of the camera, as well as the person behind it. For over a year, he has ceaselessly persisted in attempting to jump the fence.
The pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist, BDSM-provocative, techno-punk performance art ensemble Hatari unsurprisingly drew attention to themselves with their performance at the Icelandic qualifiers for the Eurovision Song Contest. So much so that they won and therefore were allowed to perform at the main event in Tel Aviv. But what now? Should they boycott the event, swallow their idealism, or use their airtime to criticise the host country for their illegal occupation of Palestine? The Icelandic director Anna Hildur joins the boys in the band all the way to the fateful final.
Four dancers from Israel, Spain and Italy decide to take part in a cultural project and investigate the stories of some refugees from Pakistan living in camps outside Berlin. A reflection about the possibility of the body to tell stories, deleting social and ethnic distinctions, and connecting people from different groups.
Lauren Southern investigates what is really happening at Europe’s borders. From interviews with human traffickers in Morocco to secret recordings of illegal NGO activity in Greece, Borderless will blow the European Border Crisis wide open.