The Longest Run (2016)

The First Drop of Rain: Making MATAR

Follow the emotional journey of Hiba Noor, a talented artist forced to flee her home country, as she navigates a new life in London while awaiting her asylum fate. This film takes you on a journey into the production of MATAR, a short film about a fellow asylum seeker facing similar problems.

Human Flow

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.

Thrown into Canada

This documentary explores the history of Canada’s first major migration of non-European and non-white refugees who arrived in 1972 when Ugandan President Idi Amin expelled all South Asians from the country. Their story of struggle and hope became part of Canada’s conversations about refugees and cultural pluralism, and informed the Canadian response to future refugee movements.

Mr. Gay Syria

In focusing his attention on the competitors of Mr Gay Syria, director Ayse Toprak shatters the one-dimensional meaning of “refugee”. Using the pageant as a means of escape from political persecution, the organiser Mahmoud — already given asylum in Berlin — hopes to offer the winner a chance to travel as well as bring international attention to the life-threatening situations faced by LGBT Syrians.

This Is Home: A Refugee Story

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

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport

In the nine months prior to World War II, 10.000 innocent children left behind their families, their homes, their childhood, and took the journey... to Britain to escape the Nazi Holocaust.

Eldorado

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon, in Italy, in Germany and in Switzerland.

It Will be Chaos

Part road-movie and part intimate portrait of lives in transit, IT WILL BE CHAOS unfolds between Italy and the Balkan corridor, intercutting two unforgettable refugees stories of human strength and resilience.

The Donut King

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

Flee

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.

Chaja & Mimi

Chaja Florentin and Mimi Frons have been best friends for 83 years. Born and raised in Berlin, they had to escape from the Nazis to Palestine with their families in 1934. They talk about their complicated relationship with Berlin in a Tel Aviv café where they meet everyday. A film about friendship, homeland and identity.

Beyond Utopia

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

Refuge(e)

Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.

Caravan

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.

Life Overtakes Me

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.

Borderless

Lauren Southern investigates what is really happening at Europe’s borders. From interviews with human traffickers in Morocco to secret recordings of illegal NGO activity in Greece, Borderless will blow the European Border Crisis wide open.

Poland: A Nation under Stress

In the run-up to parliamentary elections in mid-October, Polish filmmaker Marcin Wierzchowski travelled across his country to gauge the atmosphere in a society that is more divided than ever.

Mayor of Lowell

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.

Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America

Powerfully and heartbreakingly detailing the challenging process that LGBTQ refugees must go through to find safety and security while starting over in the US, Tom Shepard’s inspiring new documentary profiles four people who have come to San Francisco to save their own lives. Over the course of this unforgettable group portrait, Subhi (from Syria), Junior (from Congo), and Mari and Cheyenne (from Angola) experience roadblocks and triumphs as they reflect on their respective histories and try to create a home for themselves in an environment that is not always welcoming. Once in San Francisco, they are met with setbacks but each maintains hope for a better future – Mari and Cheyenne record an album, Subhi starts a tour speaking on behalf of Syrian refugees and finds love, while Junior faces challenges of homelessness and gender non-conformance.

The Boy of The Fish

"The Boy Of The Fish" follows Noon, a young boy living in a Syrian refugee camp, who finds solace and a sense of freedom in a whale-shaped doll he names "Bahr." Set against the challenging realities of camp life, Noon’s journey is both a story of resilience and a testament to the boundless imagination of childhood. Through vivid symbolism and a unique soundscape, the film explores themes of loss, hope, and the longing for freedom amidst confinement. Shot entirely on an iPhone due to restrictions in the conflict zone, the film combines raw authenticity with poetic depth to capture the emotional landscape of a young soul navigating adversity.

Unbreakable: The Jelena Dokic Story

The remarkable story of Jelena Dokic – an elite tennis star who beat the best in the world with a mental toughness few could match. Jelena survived the turmoil of being a refugee, the pressure of centre court, and the burden of a volatile father.

Nowhere Home

In 2009 the Norwegian government introduced several measures to restrict immigration. One of the measures was to provide unaccompanied asylum seeking children temporary residence permits. They should be returned to their country of origin when they turn 18. In Norway child welfare custody of their children without close caregivers. This does not apply to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children between 15 and 18 years.

Iranian Yellow Pages

Striving to build a successful life in London, Reza places an ad in a peculiar newspaper and discovers the Iranian community hidden in plain sight. Winner of the Netflix Documentary Talent Fund.

Exode

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Last Chance

This feature documentary tells the stories of 5 asylum seekers who flee their native countries to escape homophobic violence. They face hurdles integrating into Canada, fear deportation and anxiously await a decision that will change their lives forever.

Sky and Ground

Three generations of the Nabi family flee their home in Aleppo and try to make it to safety in Germany where some members of the family have already settled. Along the way they suffer countless setbacks and heartache.

Wandering, a Rohingya Story

Within a few months, the Kutupalong refugee camp has become the biggest in the world. Out of sight, 700,000 people of the Rohingya Muslim minority fled Myanmar in 2017 to escape genocide and seek asylum in Bangladesh. Prisoners of a major yet little publicized humanitarian crisis, Kalam, Mohammad, Montas and other exiles want to make their voice heard. Between poetry and nightmares, food distribution and soccer games, they testify to their daily realities and the ghosts of their past memories. Around them, the spectre of wandering, waiting, disappearing. In this place almost out of space and time, is it still possible to exist?

Amir: An Afghan Refugee Musician's Life in Peshawar, Pakistan

Amir, shot during the height of the Afghan civil war in the 1980s, investigates and portrays the life of Afghan refugees living in and around the city of Peshawar in northern Pakistan through the experiences of the musician Amir. The aspirations of Afghan refugees are expressed through their political songs dealing with the civil war in Afghanistan, with exile, with Afghan nationalism and with the Islamic revolution. In highly charged and tragic circumstances, music can be used in very direct ways, both to promote solidarity and as an agent of catharsis.

The European Dream: Serbia

“The European Dream: Serbia” is an investigative documentary by journalist Jaime Alekos about the tortures of Hungarian police to the refugees and migrants they catch trying to cross their border and the harsh living conditions in which they survive in Serbia awaiting an opportunity to enter the EU.

Edge of the Valley

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.

När världen kom till Ronneby

With the refugee influx in 2015, Ronneby gained 3,000 new inhabitants and the schools 1,000 new students. Tom Alandh traveled to Ronneby to find out how this has affected society and its inhabitants and their real and perceived security.

Wann wird es endlich wieder Sommer

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Warehoused

An estimated 12 million people live in refugee camps worldwide and only 0.1% are resettled, repatriated, or integrated into normal society each year. The feature-length documentary.

OLO, the Boy from Tibet

A 6-year-old Tibetan boy leaves his family and flees to a refugee camp in northern India.