Locked In (2017)

My Name Is Loh Kiwan

After defecting from North Korea, Loh Kiwan struggles to obtain refugee status in Belgium, where he encounters a dejected woman who has lost all hope.

Night Shapes

The Pope is in town and the night of his stay is anything but heavenly for some of Berlin′s inhabitants. Rich and poor, down-and-outs and policemen, street kids and taxi drivers - in their search for a little bit of happiness, they all end up on an amusing and at times harrowing odyssey through the labyrinth of the big city.

The House by the Sea

By a little bay near Marseille lies a picturesque villa owned by an old man. His three children have gathered by his side for his last days. It’s time for them to weigh up what they have inherited of their father’s ideals and the community spirit he created in this magical place. The arrival, at a nearby cove, of a group of boat people will throw these moments of reflection into turmoil.

Birds Are Singing in Kigali

We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.

Hotel Rwanda

Inspired by true events, this film takes place in Rwanda in the 1990s when more than a million Tutsis were killed in a genocide that went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina houses over a thousand refuges in his hotel in attempt to save their lives.

Sounds of Sand

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.

Tears of the Sun

Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician.

Refuge

Refugees are captured by border patrol officers as one woman escapes to find herself surviving on her own in a foreign land.

Turtles Can Fly

Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.

The Day After

In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.

The Secret

A stranger enters into and forever alters the life of a couple. He claims to be pursued by certain authorities who intend to prevent him from disclosing a secret that only he holds, whence the title. Is he lying, or insane - or is he telling the truth? Who, if anyone, is after him? And what *is* - the secret?

Dogville

A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.

Sweetness in the Belly

Orphaned in Africa as a child, Lilly escapes to England as a refugee, fleeing civil war in Ethiopia. Lost in this cold new world, Lilly embraces the immigrant community in London, attempting to reunite people with their scattered families. But as her friend Amina discovers, Lilly's mission isn't purely selfless: a passionate lost love affair is revealed.

Death of a Scoundrel

A Czech refugee uses women to advance his business interest.

In Another Life

Our once beautiful homeland had become uninhabitable. Too dangerous to walk the streets, drive a car, visit friends. Many had already left Syria. Risking their lives on the open water. Giving all we had to the ruthless, opportunists who trade in the currency of human misery. We all spent what little money we had to reach anywhere, a safe place, a new life away from the bloodshed, the bombing, the murder. Europe was meant to offer us hope. Yet the borders closed one by one. We gave up everything, left all we had behind. Living on hand outs, with no shelter, no money and now no hope. I am here, trapped in Calais Jungle. I don’t know where my wife is. The police treat us like animals. They beat us and spray us with teargas everyday. We cannot move forward, we cannot go back. We have to get out of here. I look into the eyes on this camp and I can see it; The blank emptiness of desperation. In another life I was a teacher. Now I’m a refugee. My name is Adnan.

Strayed

Fleeing the June 1940 arrival of Hitler's army in Paris, a young war widow and her two children are rescued from dive-bombing German fighters by a cocky, reckless teenager. He finds them refuge in an abandoned house, but despite the fact that the family quickly comes to be depending much on his cunning and survival abilities, their cohabitation proves uneasy.

Parvaneh

Parvaneh is a young Afghan immigrant who recently arrived at a transit centre for asylum seekers in the Swiss Alps. The only things she has got to know yet are the rural area surrounding the centre and the centre itself.

Saffron Kingdom

After her husband is abducted in Kashmir, a traumatised woman flees to the United States with her young son to rebuild their lives.

Highly Explosive

In the center of Hamburg, the discovery of an unexploded bomb from the Second World War not only leads to a far-reaching evacuation, but also to an interpersonal state of emergency.

Loving Glances

Swan is a lonely Serbian refugee in Belgrade. He hopes for a visa to follow his long-lost fiancée to Chicago, but winds up at the Happy Millennium dating agency. A warm romantic comedy with a twist.

Crossing The Line

Jakop, a lone fisherman on the coast of lake Peipus has to decide whether refugees brought to his door are his way of redeeming past sins or merely a means to quickly earn much needed cash.

Blood Alley

An American Merchant Marine captain, rescued from a Chinese Communist jail by local villagers, is "shanghaied" into transporting the entire village to Hong Kong on an ancient paddle steamer.

The Story of Good People

The return of a refugee from the police to his grandparents' village disrupts the life of the villagers.

The Lawyer

Marius is a highly successful lawyer based in Vilnius. He becomes obsessed with Ali, a handsome Syrian refugee he first encounters in an online chatroom run out of Belgrade. Marius is rich and enjoys a vibrant social and cultural life. Nevertheless, he feels that something is missing from it. The journey from Lithuania to Serbia is a relatively short one, but can the two navigate their way through the gulf that separates their very different lives? And how do they deal with the precarious obstacles of the physical borders that stand between them? Written and directed by Romas Zabarauskas, The Lawyer questions assumptions about what it means to be an immigrant and the possibilities offered by life in contemporary Europe.

And Breathe Normally

At the edge of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula, two women’s lives will intersect – for a brief moment – while trapped in circumstances unforeseen. Between a struggling Icelandic mother and an asylum seeker from Guinea-Bissau, a delicate bond will form as both strategize to get their lives back on track.

I Have to Run

A gay artist flees the repressive laws and war in Russia to go to Berlin, leaving his boyfriend behind. Meanwhile, life in Berlin turns out to be less inclusive he had expected.

Akoni

A Nigerian refugee struggles to integrate into Australian society after escaping the clutches of Boko Haram, until he meets a woman who opens her home, and ultimately her heart, to him.

Two Women

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

That Which Once Was

In 2032 an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile northern metropolis. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship with an Inuk ice carver who helps him confront his past.

The Merger

A country football coach who has a plan to rebuild the local football team by recruiting recently settled asylum seekers.

Up at the Villa

Superficial people are revealed and drastically changed by circumstance or luck in this a tale of death, seduction, blackmail and theft among British and Americans in Florence in the turbulent days just before World War II.

The Truce

After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.

Fortuna

Fortuna, a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, has had no news of her parents since they crossed the Mediterranean Sea. Together with other refugees, she is given shelter for the winter in a Swiss catholic monastery. While she waits for her fate to be decided by the Swiss authorities, Fortuna finds out she is pregnant. The choice she will have to make and the arrival of the refugees will give rise to concern within the religious community and will challenge their concept of Christian charity.

Journey for Margaret

An American newspaperman and his wife, end up in London after several retreats in the opening days of WWII. After a shrapnel wound and loss of her baby she returns to America. War weary, he is forced to do a story about war orphans, where he meets Margaret.

Le Havre

In the French harbor city of Le Havre, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa into the path of Marcel Marx, a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoe-shiner. With innate optimism and the tireless support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials pursuing the boy for deportation.

Hidden Children

This is a true story about forty Jewish children on their way to Palestine, who were blocked by the German and Italian occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941. Before finding a haven at Villa Emma in Nonantola in northern Italy, where they arrived on June 17, 1942, the children spent several adventurous months in Slovenia, caught up in the ongoing fight between the partisans and the Italian army. In April 1943, another 33 children, some from the Balkans, others from France, joined the original group. All were orphans who had lost their parents in concentration camps and had subsequently been smuggled out of Germany by Recha Freier, a well-known Zionist. The group ranged in age from six to twenty one and settled in at Villa Emma with their chaperones and teachers, Josef Indig, Marco Schoky and the pianist Boris Jochverdson.

The Woman with a Broken Nose

The act of a woman with a broken nose, who suddenly jumps out of a taxi and throws herself off the bridge in Belgrade, connects the lives of three witnesses.

In Darkness

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (formerly Poland).