Refugee: The Eritrean Exodus

Once My Mother

July 2014 •English

Australian filmmaker Sophia Turkiewicz investigates why her Polish mother abandoned her and uncovers the truth behind her mother's wartime escape from a Siberian gulag, leaving Sophia to confront her own capacity for forgiveness.

A 3 Minute Hug

November 2018 •Spanish

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 Between

February 2019 •Albanian

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.

Cycle of the Seasons

June 1996 •English

Thirst overcomes the hordes of Wildebeest and Zebra moving through Kenya's Masai Mara game reserve on their spectacular annual migration. With the cycle of the seasons comes the dry months, the water of the marsh receded. Now the residents of the marsh face a time of hardship, food will be scarce, until the next rains fall.

Girt by Sea

February 2014 •English

Girt By Sea is a cinematic love letter to the coastline of Australia - a poetic celebration of our connection to the sea as documented through archival footage over the past 100 years.

Viramundo

January 1965 •Portuguese

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.

Life Overtakes Me

January 2019 •English

Hundreds of refugee children in Sweden, who have fled with their families from extreme trauma, have become afflicted with 'uppgivenhetssyndrom,' or Resignation Syndrome. Facing deportation, they withdraw from the world into a coma-like state, as if frozen, for months, or even years.

Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats

May 2016 •English

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

Because I am

August 2016 •English

Based on a poem by a Zimbabwean LGBT activist written in response to the gay hate speech that is being perpetuated president Robert Mugabe. The film was shot in South East London UK with a cast of six women from several African countries playing multiple roles in this portrayal of being a lesbian in homophobic Zimbabwe. Five of the actors and the producer are refugees who fled their countries in fear of persecution for their sexuality.

Report on the Refugee Situation

February 1949 •German

An unclassifiable cross between documentary and fiction, Kipp takes the viewer through refugee camps bordering Soviet-occupied areas of Germany.

Parrot at the Milk Bar

October 2014 •Spanish

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.

Southern Border

January 2003 •Spanish

On the border, the line as principle of property and belonging reaches an extreme dimension where it physically defines the sphere of its relations. Those who transgress it reconstruct these imaginary lines on a daily basis, redefining the traditional geography and occupying the non-spaces where others live in a temporary form of existence. These others, the non-citizens, are phantasmtic, exchangeable parts of a flexible market. Made invisible, they are permanently controlled persons. Under the pretext of a greater civilian security, they are kept clear from the public spaces reserved for the citizens with rights and pushed into non-public spaces, which are run by state and military surveillance, multinational operations servicing a European market and non-governmental organisations.

(be)longing

January 2007 •English

A group of inspiring African teenagers brought illegally or trafficked into the UK overcome desperate situations and build new lives for themselves in London. The girls face deportation on their 18th birthdays under current Home Office rules. This film asks them what they long for and where they feel they belong.

Little Birds

June 2023 •Spanish

Through dances and games, migrant boys and girls who live in a shelter in Reynosa, on the US-Mexico border, shared their dreams and stories of hope with us.

A Tale of Two Kitchens

May 2019 •English

Two countries, two restaurants, one vision. At Gabriela Cámara's acclaimed Contramar in Mexico City, the welcoming, uniformed waiters are as beloved by diners as the menu featuring fresh, local seafood caught within 24 hours. The entire staff sees themselves as part of an extended family. Meanwhile at Cala in San Francisco, Cámara hires staff from different backgrounds and cultures, including ex-felons and ex-addicts, who view the work as an important opportunity to grow as individuals. A Tale of Two Kitchens explores the ways in which a restaurant can serve as a place of both dignity and community.

Draussen bleiben

October 2007 •German

Exode

October 2016 •French

When Paul Came Over The Sea

January 2017 •German

An unusual friendship in an agitated political context.

Irregulars

November 2015 •English

Each year 400.000 people from Africa, Asia and Middle East, try to enter Europe. They flee from war, persecution and poverty. Since the ways by land have been interrupted, they board overloaded vessels and face a dangerous and often deadly voyage across the Mediterranean.

On Our Doorstep

May 2023 •English

On Our Doorstep delves deep into an aspect of the refugee crisis that rarely reached the press. With NGOs being blocked by red tape and the absence of any positive action by French or British authorities, the film is a behind-the-scenes look at the unprecedented grassroots movement that rose to aid the refugees in Calais, and the community that sprang up there, before it was forcefully demolished. This is the story of what happens when young and inexperienced citizens are forced to devise systems and structures to support 10,000 refugees; and are left unguided to face the moral and emotional conflicts, blurred lines and frequent grey areas of giving aid to vulnerable people. People who do not want to be there. It questions whether the aims of the volunteers were met, and whether these aims ultimately served the refugees' needs.