After losing his job on the first day of school, an idealistic teacher attempts to get rehired by locking his students in the classroom and forcing them to resolve a long-standing feud between their villages.
The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.
A promising debut feature tells the story of a young woman returning from America to discover the realities of life in Macedonia, that looks as if it will explode with all the soldiers, corrupt crooks and terrorist idealists.
Ali is not a citizen. He drives a taxi using another man’s license and relies on the GPS to negotiate his way around a city he doesn’t know. His passenger, Esther is an old woman who can’t remember where she is going. She is angry because she has been stripped of everything that is familiar to her and she doesn't recognise the world anymore. They travel through the night in search of a vague destination while surveillance cameras mark their journey, coldly omitting the human element, defining who belongs and who does not, who is safe and who is not. What they have in common is their damage – she can’t remember and he can’t forget.
The story takes place in Ohrid, at the end of XI century. Slavic population gives resistance to Byzantium and the Christian dogma leads to the persecutions and murders. The villages are plagued with outbreak of smallpox, and all the people with the symptoms were thrown into the lime. The film follows the fate of Abraham's family as the story of survival in the Balkan intersections.
A group of Macedonian partisans are hiding away in the mountains from Bulgarian fascist authorities that occupy Macedonia.
The story of an asylum seeker in England who, when confronted with the hostile immigration system in the UK, is forced to live on the fringes of society and rely on his bike to survive. Based on the lived experience of co-writer Ayman Alhussein.
Wendy, a hardened immigration officer is offered a high-profile asylum case, judged on her ability to quickly and clinically reject applicants. Through her interrogation, she must uncover whether Haile is lying and has a more sinister reason for seeking asylum.
In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so called “green border” between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life, Jan, a young border guard, and a Syrian family intertwine.
Following a violent incident, Eissa, a 17-year-old African migrant in Egypt, strives to beat the clock to save his loved ones whatever it takes.
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during the war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.
The arrival of the young teacher Damjan in one village in western Macedonia shakes the usual daily life of its inhabitants who belong to different religions.
100 years since the beginning of First World War. Locality - French cemetery in Bitola. State protocol. There are deputies, ministers, ambassadors, military attaches, consuls, honorary consuls, media present - Priests - Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim. - Military band. Jean Batiste Valerie, an old man of about 77 years of age, arrives in Bitola for the first time. Tiny, petite, with thin and gray hair, arrives late at the sad ceremony held in honor of the fallen French soldiers in the First World War. According to correspondence and information from the French army, his predecessor with the same name and surname must be located somewhere nearby. The ceremony had already begun.
A group of crotchety codgers attempt to revive the punk-rock band they all played in 17 years earlier in "Punk Is Not Dead".
The story of two brothers of different orientation and fate. The drama takes place in an atmosphere of tension and fear, during the conflict of Yugoslav Communist Party with the Stalinism, during the Cominform. Older brother Dragoslav, a returnee from Russia, was unjustly accused of being a Russian spy and subsequently arrested. Younger brother Kosta is not interested in politics, but he's attracted by a brother's wife Vera and underworld mafia. In the end, it turns out that a young woman belongs to the Soviet spy agency.
Parvaneh is a young Afghan immigrant who recently arrived at a transit centre for asylum seekers in the Swiss Alps. The only things she has got to know yet are the rural area surrounding the centre and the centre itself.
Land of empty promises
Gaza is a 14-year-old boy who lives on the Aegean coast of Turkey. Together with his domineering father, he helps smuggle refugees from war-torn countries to Europe, giving them temporary lodgings and scant food until they attempt the crossing. Gaza dreams of escaping this life, but can't help being drawn into a dark world of immorality, exploitation and human suffering. Can you avoid becoming a monster when you've been raised by one? Onur Saylak's debut feature, adapted from the award-winning novel of the same title by Hakan Günday, one of the first novels to document the refugee crisis in Europe, "More" is the gripping story of a boy that gets to grow up in a world where there's no room for innocence.
After her son's tragic death, Helena abducts her employee, Lucian, and travels with him and her husband to scatter her son's ashes in Macedonia. Meanwhile, Lucian's lover struggles to provide for their son and break free from her dictatorial father.
High in the mountains of Macedonia a team of young film makers are making a documentary about Katerina Vandeva - a descendant of an ancient and very famous family. Several former state and party functionaries interfere in the filmmaking in the hopes of manipulating Katerina's confessions for their own purposes. Nikola, the director, and his friends have to make the choice - whether to compromise with their consciences and their art, (as normally happens here in the Balkans), or whether to preserve Katerina's message.