Deportation Class

Those who do not know the Sahara think there is only sand in the desert. But in the desert there are children who play and draw and make movies, and who would like to not have to think about the war. In the desert there's a European colony, an occupied country called Western Sahara, where there are thousands of Sahrawi refugees living a hard life in exile. "Little Sahara" tells their story, the story of a supportive, resilient people who try to thrive and grow in the Hamada, where everything has a hard time growing.

As daylight breaks between the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, undocumented migrants and their relatives, divided by a wall, prepare to participate in an activist event. For three minutes, they’ll embrace in no man’s land for the briefest and sweetest of reunions.

In rural Kosovo, identical houses are built for family members working abroad, in the hope that they will one day return to settle in their old homeland.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

I AM GOLDEN KAREN is a coming-of-age story of Thaawa, a Karen refugee in search of his identity as a migrant in Thailand. In between puberty and adulthood, he nurtures a strong desire to return to his motherland, Karen State, Burma.

A documentary film about men, women, and children fleeing northward from the existential threats in their home countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. They embark on a perilous journey with an uncertain outcome. Shortly after crossing the southern Mexican border, they find shelter with people who want to help them survive the ordeal of the at least 1,700-kilometer journey to the US.

Nothing predisposed a rural commune in the Loiret region such as Beaune-la-Rolande to embody the height of the Holocaust in France. Yet it was there that a camp was set up where Jewish families were interned, separated, their children abandoned to their fate before being deported alone to their deaths. Long hidden from view, more than eighty years after the events, this tragedy remains a sensitive subject that can still divide opinion on what should or should not be done to ensure it is not forgotten. Following personal journeys and collective commitments, this film meets activists, elected officials, and teachers who are committed to helping a region recover its memory and reconnect with its history, however painful it may be.

The Deported follows four long term residents of the United States, each with an Order of Deportation over their head, and their families as they have to make critical decisions that will either keep their family together and separate them. Their choices are: 1. to self-deport. 2. To take sanctuary in a church. 3. To fight back legally. 4. To fall into denial and do nothing.

Draussen bleiben

In 1944 Crimean Tatars has suffered a long road in exile. It was accompanied by famine, illness and loss. In the first years of exile, almost half of deported Crimean Tatars died. But those, who survived, dreamed of only one thing - to return to Crimea. The documentary 1944 tells about the tragedy of all Crimean Tatars through several separate life stories. They are cherished by each Crimean Tatar family and must be remembered by all generations to come.

Two mothers who were each separated from their children in the United States for months after fleeing from danger in their homelands to seek asylum work with pro-bono lawyers and volunteers to reunite with their kids who have been placed thousands of miles away from them with little access to communication.

An hour-long portrait of Canadian immigration lawyer, M. Lee Cohen, renowned for his work with refugees. The film follows his representation of Sonya Pecelj and Vladimir Zalipyatskikh. The first case follows a young woman, Sonya Pecelj from Kosovo, who seeks sanctuary for more than a year in a church; the second case follows a Russian sailor who dives off a ship in Halifax Harbour to escape virtual imprisonment by the Russian fish mafia.

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.

Following the dealings of Mauritanian fixers ferrying migrants by sea, this film shows the human cost of irregular migration in West Africa. Interrogating the role of fixers as facilitators of the voyage across the sea as well as the casualties that occur, this asks if they are very different from 16th century slave catchers.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainians abroad decide to confront the challenge and join the volunteer center "Blue-Yellow Cross" in Cologne to provide humanitarian aid. Vika, recently returned from Ukraine, and Anna, whose daughter is still in Ukraine, because she is waiting for her dad, he is currently serving in the military. The film reflects the dedication of Ukrainians who left their country and caring individuals actively participating in the volunteer movement to assist those affected by the war.

Somewhere between documentary and fiction, this is an essay on questions of territory and human displacements made during an excursion from southern Spain to northern Morocco. Travelling on the Mediterranean rim, we hear immigrants tell their stories.

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.

La Gemma té un pla

Partitions draws on photographs, state documents, audio recordings and footage of domestic spaces and routines, to tell a story of Sindhi migration following the Partition of India in 1947. Inspired by the life of a woman who was born in Hyderabad, Sindh, grew up in Madras (Chennai) and lived the rest of her life as a Singaporean, the film juxtaposes fragmented recollections of the past with enduring practices of the present.

A nine-year-old Syrian refugee girl contemplates her increasingly bleak future after being forced to drop out of school in the midst of Lebanon’s unprecedented economic collapse and battle with Covid-19.