Little Birds

The parallel stories of four Pakistani immigrants in Greece become the trigger for the director to explore the story of his father, a worker in the Perama Shipyard. The background unfolds a most deadly shipwreck, Libyan immigrants found in limbo, as well as a (possibly racist) crime, which was committed during the shooting of this film.

“The European Dream: Serbia” is an investigative documentary by journalist Jaime Alekos about the tortures of Hungarian police to the refugees and migrants they catch trying to cross their border and the harsh living conditions in which they survive in Serbia awaiting an opportunity to enter the EU.

As was common in Diaz's Mexico, a young hacienda worker finds his betrothed imprisoned and his life threatened by his master for confronting a hacienda guest for raping the girl. This film is the first of several attempts to make a feature-length motion picture out of the 200,000-plus feet of film shot by Sergei Eisenstein, on photographic expedition in Mexico during 1931-32 for Upton Sinclair and a cadre of private American producer-investors. Silent with music and English intertitles.

Takeda is a film about the universality of the human being seen thru the eyes of a Japanese painter that has adopted the Mexican culture.

This nature documentary follows some of the world’s most charismatic animals as they travel to Mexico across the span of a year. Using access to some of the country’s most protected sights, the film explores the relationship between family members as they battle to survive. Mixing moments of intimacy with fast-paced action, the film captures the epic scope of Mexico’s wildlife while it seeks to explain one of the most important themes of our era: migration.

Monarch butterflies have brought hope to the darkest times of people's lives. In Mexico, when they arrive for Day of the Dead, they are thought to be souls of the departed. Coincidence?

An orphaned dinosaur raised by lemurs joins an arduous trek to a sancturary after a meteorite shower destroys his family home.

In the early 1980s, at the beginning of what would become a 12-year-long civil war, El Salvador's talented football team was one national institution upon which both the left and the right could agree. When the team pulled off a stunning 1-0 upset against Mexico and qualified to compete in the 1982 World Cup, it was a high point for the tiny country's national pride. Unfortunately, the team's Cinderella story devolved into a nightmarish farce.

Two hopeful migrants must make the long, arduous journey across a desolate landscape toward the promise of a better life only to discover their destination may no longer be the place they believed it was.

Migranta tells the stories of Vicky, Betty and Lety, (three mothers who have come to Canada from Mexico as part of the federal government’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program) as they face calculated risks, difficult choices and harsh realities while navigating, work and life in Canada while being separated from families and communities they support.

The interview, held on January 4, 2001, was the last given by Professor Milton Santos, who died from cancer on June 24 of the same year. The geographer is gone, but his thoughts remains. Its political and cultural ideals inspire the debate on Brazilian society and the construction of a new world. His statement is a true testimony, a lesson that the world can be better. Based on geography, Milton Santos performs a reading of the contemporary world that reveals the different faces of the phenomenon of globalization. It is in the evidence of contradictions and paradoxes that constitute everyday life that Milton Santos sees the possibilities of building another reality. He innovates when, instead of standing against globalization, proposes and points out ways for another globalization.

Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.

For years, together with his partners from the production company O Quadro, he has been betting on cinema as a tool to explore the typical issues of youth. In this film, Evandro Scorsin turns the cameras on himself as he deals with the dilemmas of the passing of time and the imposition of adulthood. In an exercise in autofiction where cinema and life merge, the film is also a cinematic love letter to the beloved masters (especially Nicholas Ray). Coming and going between two countries and times, it records the vertigo of displacement and the reinventions inherent to an immigrant experience.

Documentary that shows the events that culminated in the deposition of President João Goulart, on March 31, 1964, and the implementation of the military dictatorship in Brazil. Around 40 characters reveal behind the scenes and comment in detail on this important moment in Brazilian political history.

Around the film hang fascinating questions about border politics, which I’ll touch on in an introduction before the screening. One of Eugene Buck’s motivations for making the film may have been his rough cross-examination during his kidnappers’ first trials, in October 1913, when defense attorneys cast him as a confused and unreliable witness against idealistic freedom fighters. On film he could reproduce the pursuit, the shootouts, his kidnapping, and his friend’s murder just as he had testified. Reenacting the crime on film may have been the best revenge—and a way to honor the sacrifice of Deputy Ortiz, a twenty-year police veteran and, for the era, a rare Mexican American lawman.

Animation that illustrates five of Augusto Monterroso's fables.

Realm of Darkness - The Elusive Depths of Mexico

Oaxaca - Zwischen Rebellion und Utopie

„The Frontier“ or „La Frontera“ is the undulating landscape of the Sonora Desert in Arizona, which once was a symbol of freedom on the horizon of the American West – and also a region plagued by recurrent territorial struggles. Currently, a high steel fence stretches over several miles strictly separating the USA and Mexico into two territories. Every year, the remains of hundreds of migrants are retrieved from the area. The tense situation in Arizona’s borderland has split the locals into two groups: one demanding a more technically advanced border control system, the other requesting more humanitarian help. Accompanying various locals, NGO workers and self-proclaimed border guards from the region, filmmaker Gudrun Gruber raises the question of whether the latest border control technology will finally bring peace to the area, or rather merely increase the number of deaths.

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