Bonegilla: The Migrant's Journey

What happens to families in the absence of sons? What happens to land in the absence of farmers? What happens to villages in the absence of men? Sent Away Boys weaves together stories of individual ambitions and family biographies from Punjab (India) to chronicle the gradual transformation of agrarian landscape and patriarchal traditions through ongoing transnational migration. As the promise of a secure future in agriculture grows increasingly uncertain for young men across the region, escaping India to join the low-wage labor in countries like Canada and USA becomes their sole aspiration. In rural Punjab, being a successful man now entails leaving their village, traveling abroad, and sending money home. Through interviews with men preparing to undertake often risky journeys and women awaiting the return of their sons, brothers and husbands, Sent Away Boys shows how young men's decisions to emigrate implicate families and communities across North India.

Director Miriam Pucitta grew up as the child of Italian migrant workers in Switzerland in the 1960s and 1970s. She herself has only fragmentary memories of this time; her mother and other relatives evade Miriam's questions. Together with her daughter Giulia, she researches her family's living conditions in Switzerland and finds a new understanding of her parents' difficult decisions.

A humorous observation in Barcelona’s immigrant neighbourhood El Raval. Four barber shops, four places of remembrance, strange time and space capsules inhabited by people who left their home to find a better one, while the Spaniards are about to leave their own country themselves.

Pasos ciegos

Forastero

Five Afghan men try to reach Europe. The filmmakers followed them for over six months, filming their clandestine journey and chronicling a migration combining fantasy and stark reality, setbacks and achievements, in the midst of the dangers of such trips.

A meeting between two strangers sparks the desire to understand each other through the medium of cinema. They both simultaneously start recording their surroundings on camera and crafting the resulting footage. They, Elettra from Italy and Hazem from Gaza, become the subjects of this film that documents their first moments together. It depicts a multi-faceted reality in which North and South confront each other in a discussion on rights and inequalities, a reality in which we witness a migration towards one another, while capturing an intimate way of making a film together.

A metaphor of the Flood in our times, The Flood is the rain of violence that washes over us. Noah´s Ark is the train that runs through Mexico toward the United States and migrants are the species attempting to save their lives. For the directors, cinema moves people not just by condemnation, but by confronting and fostering emotions which lead to new, constructive ideas. This documentary became a cinematographic diary for their first viewer, their three-year-old daughter, Zafirah.

Talking About Visibility

Enduring 28 days of relentless construction labor, Frank struggles to prep a house for painting amidst Phoenix's scorching pandemic summer.

Thousands of footprints stretch for miles across New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, capturing moments when Ice Age humans encountered now-extinct beasts, including enormous ground sloths and mammoths. What can these footprints reveal about the peopling of the Americas and what life was like at the end of the last Ice Age?

A family history archive as told by matriarch Azalu Mekonnen and her granddaughter Samira Hooks.

Ilyes Djadel : en vrai de vrai

As Jahayra writes letters to her mother, her words trace a journey from Ecuador to London, unfolding a tender portrait of love, sacrifice, and resilience, in the search for a better life for her children.

The favourite places for thinking of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche - Sorrento, Engadine, Venice, Genoa, Rapallo, Nice, Turin - with passages from his letters and notebooks that explain why they were so important to him.

Viramundo shows the saga of the northeastern migrants that arrive in São Paulo, beginning with a train arriving and ending with a train leaving São Paulo in a cycle repeated every day. Viramundo's aim was to question why the military coup d'état in Brazil happened without any popular resistance or revolution or reaction of the society.

T'Day

Every year, on the steppes of the Serengeti, the most spectacular migration of animals on our planet: Around two million wildebeest, Burchell's zebra and Thomson's gazelles begin their tour of nearly 2,000 miles across the almost treeless savannah. For the first time, a documentary captures stunning footage in the midst of this demanding journey. The documentary starts at the beginning of the year, when more than two million animals gather in the shadow of the volcanoes on the southern edge of the Serengeti in order to birth their offspring. In just two weeks, the animal herd's population has increased by one third, and after only two days, the calves can already run as fast as the adults The young wildebeest in this phase of their life are the most vulnerable to attacks by lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas. The film then follows the survivors of these attacks through the next three months on their incredible journey, a trip so long that 200,000 wildebeest will not reach the end.

The film explores the reasons for emigrating from Italy and describes the feeling of being a stranger in one's own country after many years in Switzerland. It is the sequel to Emigrazione.

This documentary follows various migratory bird species on their long journeys from their summer homes to the equator and back, covering thousands of miles and navigating by the stars. These arduous treks are crucial for survival, seeking hospitable climates and food sources. Birds face numerous challenges, including crossing oceans and evading predators, illness, and injury. Although migrations are undertaken as a community, birds disperse into family units once they reach their destinations, and every continent is affected by these migrations, hosting migratory bird species at least part of the year.