Categories
- Refugees/asylum
- Migration/illegals
- Conflict
- Trafficking/smuggling
Apprendre à Etre Heureux / They teach us how to be happy
[Switzerland, 1996]
Director: Peter von Gunten
The film shows the difficult, troublesome journey through the Swiss asylum procedure which comes across as the ultimate psychological endurance test. We witness the incapacitation process during the interviews, the strain of living in camps, discreetly called refugee centers we share in the private fears and distress of the refugees.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0117890/
Children of Tibet
[Australia, 2003]
Director: Melinda Wearne
The film follows the journey of three young Tibetan refugees who escape by foot over the Himalaya in winter. Told in their own words, it is a story of courage and hope. The journey takes them along a dangerous route - leaving their families behind, they are placed in the care of guides who are entrusted to take them across the mountains.
http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/2392332308
Frontier of Dreams and Fears
[USA/Palestine, 2001]
Director: Mai Masri
From Shatila camp in Beirut to Dheisha camp in Bethlehem – this is the story of two Palestinian refugee girls and their extraordinary journey to the borders of exile separating them from their homeland and from each other.
http://www.jewishfilm.com/jz31.html#Frontierof
Gas Attack
[UK, 2001]
Director: Kenneth Glenaan
Starring: Liam Brennan and Morag Calder
A pseudo-documentary focusing on the dispersal of asylum seekers within the UK in the wider context of anti-asylum media coverage, the 2001 ‘race riots’, tougher political stance on asylum and an attack by random extremist.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0295275/
The Harrowing Escape from Tibet
[1995]
Director: Toby Hilton
The film follows a group trying to flee over the Himalayas to northern India in the hopes of attaining refugee status there. Some scenes were filmed clandestinely and portray the brutal treatment of Tibetans by Chinese authorities.
http://www.friends-of tibet.org.nz/news/april_2004_update_6.htm
Home Accross Lands
[2009]
Director: John Lavall
Documentary that explores the journey of resettlement-- it tells the story of a small group of Kunama refugees and how they reestablish their sense of community in their new home in America.
www.homeacrosslands.org
Kisangani Diary
[Austria/France, 1998]
Director: Hubert Sauper
(45 minutes)
Along an overgrown railway track south of the Zairen town Kisangani, ex-Stanleyville, an expedition of the UN, together with a handful of journalists discover “lost” refugees. They are eighty thousand (!) Hutus from far away Rwanda, the last survivors of three years of hunger and armed persecution that transpired throughout the vast Congo basin. The film traces those refugees into the heart of the rainforest, follows the hopeless attempts of help.
By the director of acclaimed documentary “Darwin’s Nightmare”.
http://www.hubertsauper.com/kisangani.html
Leaving Tuzla, Bosnia
Director: Evan Friedman
Documentary about young refugees trying to leave their home city of post-war Tuzla.
http://www.mediarights.org/film/leaving_tuzla_bosnia
Lost Boys of Sudan
[USA, 2003]
Director: Megan Mylan and Jon Schenk
Starring: Santino Majok Chuor and Peter Kon Dut
A feature length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on their journey from Africa to America.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383475/
Molly and Mobarak
[Australia, 2003]
Director: Tom Zubrycki
Australians share their community with 90 Afghan refugees.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379382/
Refugee
[USA, 2003]
Director: Spencer Nakasako
Three young refugees from Cambodia, raised in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles, return to their country of origin for the first time.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0951901/
Tortured to Life / (Mehdi Zana)
[France, 2004]
Director: Kudret Gunes
This portrait of Mehdi, the first Kurdish mayor of Diyarbakir, Turkey, in 1977, shows his problems in exile and his fight for the rights of the Kurdish people. He is now a political refugee in Sweden where he is trying to make a life for himself in a new and alien society.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0415938/
Well Founded Fear
[USA, 2000]
Director: Shari Robertson
This documentary looks at the process of granting political asylum to the United States. Who deserves it? Who gets it? Who decides? Entering the closed corridors of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0241051/
26,000 gezichten / (26,000 faces)
[Netherlands, 2004-2005]
Director: Paula van der Oest, Jos Stelling, Peter Delpeut, Heddy Honigmann, etc.
Short films in documentary or fiction style portraying rejected asylum seekers who will have to leave the Netherlands, following the Government’s 2004 decision to expell 26,000 asylum seekers in three years’ time. A first batch of 17 films was first shown at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and broadcast on Dutch public television, with more films to follow.
Initiator Joost Bosland and his team recruited more than 100 Dutch film directors for their project, among them Oscar-nominated Paula van der Oest, acclaimed film historian Peter Delpeut, and Heddy Honigmann, whom many consider to be Holland's greatest living documentary maker.
Several of these films can be viewed with English subtitles on http://www.26000gezichten.nl/english.php.
Don Bonus
[USA 1995]
Director: Spencer Nakasako
After escaping the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Ny family became one of thousands of refugees faced with resettlement in the U.S. Their lives unfold through the lens of this stirring video diary. As 18-year-old Sokly Ny (a.k.a. Don Bonus) struggles to graduate from high school, his family is harassed in the housing projects, his eldest brother cannot fill a dead father's shoes and his youngest brother ends up in a youth prison. Sokly shares these experiences, his personal feelings and his hopes as the year progresses.
Japanese-American Nakasako won the prestigious Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus, a story of triumph and survival from the perspective of one of America's newest arrivals.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0112267/
Amigo No Gima
[Spain, 2004]
Director: Iñaki Peñafiel
Starring: Francisco Algora and Cesareo Estabanez
The transfer of an old hairdresser’s shows the social change of the neighborhood of Lavapiés in Madrid and his people. “Amiga no Gima” narrates, during the celebration of the Chinese new year, farewells and attempts of arrival. Different attitudes towards the diversity are portrayed.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441103/
Balseros
[Spain, 2002]
Director: Carlos Bosch and Josep M. Doménech
Starring: Guillermo Armas and Rafael Cano
In the summer of ’94, a team of reporters of “Televisió de Catalunya” filmed and interviewed seven Cubans and their families during the days they were preparing the risky adventure of throwing themselves in the sea to reach the coast of the US, fleeing from the economic difficulties that were ruining their country. Some time later, in the refugee camp of the US military base of Guantànamo on Cuba, the reporters were able to localize the ones who had been captured in the middle of the sea. Seven years, the team “Balseros” meets again with those people to discover what has been their destination.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321376/
Clandestin Blues
[Belgium, 1998]
Director: Pierre De Lattre
Johnny is forced out of Belgium in inhumane conditions, even though he has requested political asylum 5 years ago. Since a few months he has been forced to live in clandestine, where he continued to play in his music group in Brussels. He arrives in Ghana where he tries to start a new life, but it is hopeless. His Belgium friend Pierre tries to motivate him and they start to play the blues like they used to. This film gives a human face to the anonym group of refugees and migrants, since the lonesome battle is universal: one simply has to survive.
http://www.bevrijdingsfilms.be/ - see under: filmlijst - vluchtelingen
Exodus / (a.k.a. Vina’s world – De wereld van Vina)
[Belgium, 1999 – Flemish tv channel VRT-Canvas]
Director: Lode Desmet
Five year old Vina and her father travel from Sweden to Northern Iraq to visit her grandparents and uncle, where they try to help her brother to flee Iraq. He reaches Turkey, but once in Istanbul he becomes so fearful that, to the despair of his family, he decides to return to Northern Iraq. Vina leaves Iraq not knowing if she will ever she her family again. Three months later her uncle dies in a train station in Stockholm after he fled Iraq illegally.
A story of bombardments, smuggling and emotions, depicting refugees not as adventurers who are stepping boldly into a new future, but as ordinary people reluctant to leave their country.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285077/
Far / (Dûr)
[Kurdistan, 2003]
Director: Kazim Öz
The story of a village in Turkey, Kurmesan, which was once populous and lively but now is silent with only a few old people remaining due to the atmosphere of war, migration and economic factors. Most of the villagers have migrated, some to the big Turkish cities, most to Europe. The film looks at the lives and dreams of those who left and those who remain, and explores the generation gap.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0851518/
Kelly Loves Tony
[USA 1998]
Director: Spencer Nakasako
Video diary about a refugee teenage couple of the Iu Mien tribe of Laos growing up too fast and too soon in Oakland, California. 17 year old Kelly Saeturn, born in a refugee camp in Thailand and resettled in California, dreams of attending college. But she has become pregnant by her fiancé Tony, a school dropout with a criminal record. Tony persuades her to move in with his family, who want her to behave as a traditional Iu Mein mother. Despite the stress in the household, she continues her education in college, but this creates a widening gap with Tony.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144266/
Mehmet and Mehmet / (Mehmet ü Mehmet)
[Italy, 2004]
Director: Paolo Colombo and Michela Guberti
This documentary stems from the filmmakers' encounter with two musicians in a tavern in Beyoglu, where every night a group of recent immigrants to the city gathers for an evening of intense and emotional respite from the hardships of life in Istanbul. The patrons of the tavern are Alevi’s, a Turkish religious minority that follows the beliefs of 13th century mystic Haci Bektafl who stressed the sacredness of the individual. A film on friendship, trust, respect and love of music.
http://www.riocinema.ndirect.co.uk/kff03/documentaries.htm
Platicando
[Spain, 2004]
Director: Marisa Lafuente
Platicando enters the life of 15 immigrants through his intimate and personal telephone calls. A camera has entered in four telephone booths/ hairdressers of Madrid on a historical day: March 14, only three days after the tragedy of M11. The stories and calls are real.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0480183/
The Boy who played on the Buddhas of Bamiyan
[UK, 2004]
Director: Phil Grabsky
The documentary is about Mir’s life in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Though much has changed and is changing, there is no guarantee that Mir will survive life in a cave - the sickness, dirt, dust, lack of water and lack of food. Yet his engaging story is not one of gloom and doom but that of a normal child who takes life as it comes and finds entertainment wherever he can.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398801/
Rain 1949
[Israel, 1998]
Director: Ilan Yagoda
Documentary on the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who arrived in Israel in 1949 and settled in the kibbutz Megido, and on the Arab villagers of Lajun whom they displaced. Decades later, both communities still feel closely tied to the land.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171683/
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/filmmakersforum.html
Passagères clandestines / (a.k.a: Mother’s crossing)
[Belgium, 2003]
Director: Lode Desmet
This documentary shows how Iranian woman Sima is smuggled witrh her two daughters from Turkey to Greece with the help of “Djouma the Arab”, a smuggler who himself fled Iraqi Kurdistan.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/308828/Passag-res-Clandestines/overview
