Asylum(1998)

One More Brother(sv)

From 1957 to 1961 170.000 Algerians flee to Tunisia because of the war. Most of them walk by feet across the mountains and the desert, carrying only a few of their belongings in their hands or on donkeys. As there is no clay in the desert they cannot build ordinary houses. They have to live in pits in the ground, covered with canvas, but some are offered to stay in American army tents.

Dyab(ku)

12-year-old Dyab is a Kurdish Yazidi boy living at Arbat refugee camp, after the horrendous attacks by the Islamic States on their villages at Shingal Mountains (Sinjar). However, Dyab’s dream is, to become a filmmaker and actor and tell the stories and sufferings of his people to the outside world.

Flee(da)

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.

This Is Home: A Refugee Story(ar)

The lives of four Syrian families, resettled in Baltimore and under a deadline to become self-sufficient in eight months.

Beyond Utopia(en)

A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.

Mayor of Lowell(en)

This short documentary chronicles the culture and arts of Cambodian Americans and the Lowell, MA community through the eyes of Sokhary Chau, the first Cambodian American Mayor in the United States. Chau immigrated to the U.S. at seven years old to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide. Through this unique story that showcases the best of Lowell—immigrant success, assimilation, history, and the development of the arts—we see a man born into a war-torn country who comes to America to be a first-in-the-nation leader.

Draussen bleiben(de)

Kitten of vluchteling?(nl)

The Hot Potato: The Road to Transformation(en)

To cool the heat on the asylum debate - the biggest 'hot potato' in Australian politics, we took a hot potato food van around the country in the lead up to the 2013 Federal Election. The mission? To see what Australia really thinks asylum seekers. This is an account of this journey.

The Last Season(en)

In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.

A Sense of Justice(fr)

A Sense of Justice, immerses us In a law firm in this same city. There, we can find Christine Mengus and Nohra Boukara, specialized in the rights of foreigners, supported by Audrey Scarinoff and their co-workers.. Stories from their sad, appalling or tragicomic cases alternate with their daily legal work. And as we hear snatches of consultations involving illegal entry or departure, deportation orders, the right to reside or medical assistance, we become witnesses to predictable tragedies, to the administrative or social precariousness induced by such predicaments, and to whole lives depending on court rulings.

Caravan(en)

The four Afghan refugees who have applied for asylum in Austria strike up the song, “The caravan moves on” again and again. Encouraged by the journalist Lucy Ashton to record their lives on their smartphone cameras as a video diary, the friends film their precarious daily routine between visits to authorities, small jobs, and changing accommodations. Yet even when hope is lost, one certainty remains: the power of friendship.

Freedom Runners(en)

Rotem Genossar, a teacher at the Bialik-Rogozin campus in south Tel Aviv, founds a running group for his students, young African refugees whose families fled their homeland and now live in Israel without any legal status. At first running is just a social activity for the students, but it quickly becomes a means to fight for their civil rights, part of a struggle to secure them a place of their own, out of the margins of Israeli society.

Fadia’s Tree(en)

While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies above, Fadia, a Palestinian refugee stranded in Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. When a chance meeting introduces her to the director, Sarah, she challenges her to find an ancient mulberry tree that once grew next to her grandfather’s house in historic Palestine, a tree that stands witness to her family’s existence.

Temporary Identity(he)

What does it mean to belong to a place, a country? In a south Tel Aviv elementary school, that question is addressed head-on by a fourth-grade class and their teacher. The children are asylum seekers whose families mostly do not have a legal status in Israel, yet learn, sing and play in Hebrew all the while examining their identity and sense of belonging.

The Donut King(en)

Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.

Ukraine-Poland: The Border of Solidarity(fr)

Since 24 February 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, several million refugees have already been taken in by Poles. In the Lublin region, near the Bug River, which marks the border with Ukraine and Belarus, farmers, shopkeepers, a photographer, and a teacher tell how their daily lives have been transformed by the outbreak of this war.

Amine – Hero on Probation(de)

Amine Diare Conde fled from Guinea to Europe at the age of fifteen. His voluntary work makes the 22-year-old the best-known asylum seeker in Switzerland.

Human Flow(en)

More than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war, the greatest displacement since World War II. Filmmaker Ai Weiwei examines the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Over the course of one year in 23 countries, Weiwei follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretch across the globe, including Afghanistan, France, Greece, Germany and Iraq.

Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time(en)

An urgent and powerful documentary, shot in a detention centre where asylum seekers trying to reach Australian shores are indefinitely detained. Secretly shot on a mobile phone by Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani while detained on Manus, in Papua New Guinea, the film is a collaboration with Dutch-Iranian filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani. Boochani recounts, via the testimonies of fellow inmates, the abuse and violence inflicted and the precarious state of limbo they find themselves in. Chauka, the name of the dreaded solitary confinement unit within the detention centre, was originally the name of a beautiful bird and symbol of the Manus Island. By interweaving dialogue with two Manusian men and shots of daily life on the island, the film gives a much-needed voice to Manus inhabitants, understandably distressed by the current situation. With marked restraint, the film exposes lives broken by shocking immigration policies.