The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.
The day before they go their separate ways, three friends get together for one last all-nighter in the city that saw them grow.
Cristi has just moved to an unknown country, far away from family and friends. At first, she is happy for the challenge. But soon she begins to question her place in this new world that seems to be a lost town, made of absences, distances, silence and indifference. '4242' is the story of a young female immigrant, a story of a teenager's anguish who is trying to redefine her identity after being forced to leave home.
Mistakenly landed in Corsica, Mehret, a young woman in exile, is forced to cross the island to to reach Italy. Survival and walking are her only concerns, the East coast her destination.
A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.
Sokol is a middle-aged Kosovar Albanian who, together with his family, emigrates from Kosovo to Turkey, and faces the foreign and unknown world. After some time he becomes homesick, eventually leaving his last will he gave to his son that when he dies, his bones will be returned to his native country. He dies near of a cliff at the Black Sea coast. In his native village, the news that Sokol has been returned from emigration are being spread.
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice, and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
One night, the phone rings in a traditional Portuguese snack bar from the country side. The Spanish Civil Guard is looking for Kunta. He isn't there and till he arrives people speculate about those phone calls and about who is that man. His he a thief? A terrorist?
With only his wife by his side, a promising young boxer flees communist Poland to chase his dream of becoming the greatest fighter in history.
A romantic drama that charts the lives of three women from different backgrounds, forever changed when they emigrate to New Zealand as war brides.
In 1960, Martín and Marcos are forced by their difficult personal circumstances to travel to Switzerland in search of work, leaving their families in the Madrid of Franco's Spain. But they undertake more than a simple journey; they begin the road to a new life.
An elderly Jewish woman, who was a teenager during the outset of the Holocaust and was forced to choose between her own life and her younger brother's, still lives with the guilt until she finally shares her nightmare experience with her own adult daughter.
Unemotional, restrained cinematographic poem, situated in a wintry and poor suburb of Tehran. A man is dismissed and his lack of prospects for the future make him decide to seek his happiness abroad. He leaves his wife and child behind and for a long time nothing is heard of him. Then a stranger turns up, a car mechanic looking for a job. The attractive single mother can’t resist his attentions. Very subtly, a struggle ensues that reflects that of a whole generation of young doubting Iranians who may want to leave the country, but hardly know how to start.
"Baba" is a bitter melodrama set in Istambul. A father is not able to earn enough money to feed his family. He is waiting to emigrate to Germany. When his landlord's son kills a man while drunk, the father is prepared to answer for the deed himself, provided that the landlord supports his wife and children. As there is little difference for the father between ten years in prison or ten years in a foreign country, he regards this to be the best solution.
LEI and WONG clandestinely arrive to Ecuador, on their way to the port city of Guayaquil. From here LEI plans to continue her journey to New York, but CHANG, a bipolar mobster will decide her fate. WONG unwillingly gets entangled in the web of corruption that operates the encroachment of Chinese immigrants. His only objective is to bring his twelve-year-old son from China.
Dao (22) is a young Thai woman. She arrives in the Netherlands to share the rest of her life with a dutch called Michel. The confrontation with a man she barely knows in a strange country with foreign tastes, scents and habits makes Dao feel rootless. Does she realizes only now what she has started?
Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt — until a miracle reunites them.
After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.
Robert, a jaded middle-aged New Yorker, travels to Belgrade to make some quick cash by marrying someone for U.S. immigration papers. The plan goes awry when the money never arrives, leaving Robert stuck in Serbia. Meanwhile in New York, Banko, the young Serb whose girlfriend Robert is to marry, fights to come up with the cash.