Guestworkers (2021)

The Last Glacier

A docudrama on the closing of the town of Schefferville. When Raoul loses his job at the mine because the operations are ending, he's been settled there for ten years with Carmen and their son. They're now forced to leave the town, leaving behind the traces of an ephemeral prosperity.

God Willing

After a couple of chance encounters the nightly meetings with Juli become the most important thing in Juan's life. God willing, fantasy can become reality.

Code Unknown

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

The Storm

A fictional story within the historical context of the disastrous flood that engulfed the Dutch coastal province of Zeeland in 1953. When their farmhouse is destroyed by the flood, teenage mother Julia gets separated from her baby boy, whom she kept hidden in a box. She is saved from drowning by a young air force lieutenant, who agrees to go help looking for Julia's little son.

Jagame Thandhiram

When a clever, carefree gangster is recruited to help an overseas crime lord take down a rival, he is caught off guard by the moral dilemmas that follow.

Big Night

Primo and Secondo, two immigrant brothers, pin their hopes on a banquet honoring Louis Prima to save their struggling restaurant.

On the Seventh Day

A group of undocumented Mexican immigrants work long hours six days a week, and then savor their day of rest on Sundays on the soccer fields of Brooklyn.

Beef Cattle

Thomas, in his forties, holds an important post in a slaughterhouse. He is engaged to Marie-Rose, the daughter of the director, whom he hopes to follow later. In a routine examination in the hospital, however, he finds out that he has cancer and his days are counted. The upheaval that he suffers as a result, however, does not take long, his decision is certain: he will use the short time to clean up some bad guys. What else can he do now?

Saints and Soldiers

Five American soldiers fighting in Europe during World War II struggle to return to Allied territory after being separated from U.S. forces during the historic Malmedy Massacre.

The Heart of the Earth

Tensions mount in an Andalusia mining town between local Spanish workers and their British employers.

Romper Stomper

Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins' merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?

In America

A family of Irish immigrants adjusts to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

Lucky

Lucky, an undocumented immigrant, struggles to make his way in New York but finds himself caught in a web of crime and murder, forcing him to take extreme action.

Lowlife

The sordid lives of an addict, an ex-con, and a luchador collide when an organ harvesting caper goes very, very wrong.

The Toilers and the Wayfarers

Phillip and Dieter nearly suffocate hiding their sexual identity in the face of puritanical small town values. Joined by a mysterious German relative, the three misfits escape to the big city searching for a place to belong.

Where the Green Ants Dream

The Australian Aborigines (in this film anyway) believe that this is the place where the green ants go to dream, and that if their dreams are disturbed, it will bring down disaster on us all. The Aborigines' belief is not shared by a giant mining company, which wants to tear open the soil and search for uranium.

Shelter

Hannah and Tahir fall in love while homeless on the streets of New York. Shelter explores how they got there, and as we learn about their pasts we realize they need each other to build a future.

The Nun's Story

After leaving a wealthy Belgian family to become a nun, Sister Luke struggles with her devotion to her vows during crisis, disappointment, and World War II.

My Life in Pink

Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year-old certainty, she believes she was meant to be a little girl -- and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where she expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation and guilt -- as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble. As suburban prejudices close around them, family loves and loyalties are tested in the ever-escalating dramatic turns of Alain Berliner's critically acclaimed first feature. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and a favorite at festivals around the world, this unique film experience delivers magic of the rarest sort through a story of difference, rejection, and childlike faith in miracles.

"An Untitled Film" by George Alshevskij-Jones

“An Untitled Film” by George Alshevskij-Jones is a short documentary/visual essay about the struggles of moving to seek a better future in a different country. The research for the film was done by observing and talking to people who have left their home country. It doesn’t matter what country a person has left and in which country he has found himself, the general experiences and emotions stay the same. The most important message that I want the film to convey is that everything is possible and home is not a place on a map, but a place in the soul of each person that I spoke to. The unconventional way of showing many people as one is not just a way of making the film more convenient to create, but a way to fit a much information into one consistent image, that the audience is more likely to understand and perceive as the author intended it. My own experience blended in with the experiences of others.

La Salada

Three intertwining stories that take place in La Salada — the largest unregulated market in Buenos Aires: a Korean father prepares his daughter for an arranged marriage, a young Bolivian man searches for work, and a Taiwanese DVD seller tries to woo a young woman to be his girlfriend.

Sway

Three parallel love stories set in three different cities are set against some of the major international events of the last five years, in this ambitious.

Unlucky Plaza

The lives of an arrogant young motivational speaker in debt to the Chinese mafia, his lookin’-to-get-out girlfriend, and a single father in dire straits fatefully intertwine in this nail-biting thriller from Singapore that is based, almost unbelievably, on a true story.

The Refusal

In 1971, the Algerian government nationalized hydrocarbons. The consequences of this decision on the community of Algerians in France are numerous. The Galti family is prey to these economic problems. The father, Khaled, former member of the F.L.N. in France, does not escape the sentence. Sharazade, his wife and comrade in combat, finds herself torn between her role as wife, mother and nostalgia for a country and a bygone past. As for his son Karim, a victim of socio-cultural division, all he has left is refusal.

Past Lives

After decades apart, childhood friends Nora and Hae Sung are reunited in New York for one fateful weekend as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.

Malartic

Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.

Ábreme

The collision between two cultures explodes in one household as all three wait for Javier's immigration papers. A dark comedy that explores immigration, mental health and the magnetism hiding as aversion.

Here

Stefan, a migrant construction worker living in Brussels, is planning a trip home to his mother in Romania. In preparing for his voyage, he reconnects with local family members over gifted bowls of homemade soup, interacts with strangers, and discovers a revivifying commune with nature. This leads him to an unexpected connection with Shuxiu, a Chinese-Belgian bryologist studying the local moss.

Firmin

After almost thirty years, Germaine, Firmin's great love, suddenly returns to her hometown. Firmin is overjoyed and determined to win Germaine's heart back, but Germaine rejects his advances. Then Mohammed Boutrous, a young and talented boxer, seeks out Firmin. He wants Firmin to train him. Firmin accepts, hoping to regain his honor and the love of his life...

Autumn Moon

A Japanese tourist, Tokio, meets a 15-year-old Hong Kong girl and her grandmother left behind in Hong Kong while their family emigrates to Canada.

Nowhere

A film about people who are leaving Serbia for economic reasons.

Samba

Samba migrated to France 10 years ago from Senegal, and has since been plugging away at various lowly jobs. Alice is a senior executive who has recently undergone a burnout. Both struggle to get out of their dead-end lives. Samba's willing to do whatever it takes to get working papers, while Alice tries to get her life back on track until fate draws them together.

Gangs of New York

In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.

The Dead Don't Hurt

In the 1860s, fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy embarks on a journey with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen, attempting to forge a life together in the dusty town of Elk Flats, Nevada. When Holger decides to go fight for the Union in the burgeoning Civil War, Vivienne must fend for herself, which isn't easy in a town controlled by a corrupt mayor.

Paris Je T'aime

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Alleluia

Michel, a murderous womanizer, meets introverted Gloria online and treats her to a whirlwind one-night-stand. Offering herself as an accomplice in his seductive crimes, the unhinged lovers embark on a deadly odyssey amplified by wild sex, unbridled jealousy, and passionate forays into the dark arts. This smart and gory shocker breathes new life into the lovesick horror genre to serve up a chilling tale of white-hot desperation and terrifying devotion.

Man Push Cart

Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.

Visions of Europe

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Hippocrates

Benjamin is meant to be a great doctor, he’s certain of it. But his first experience as a junior doctor in the hospital ward where his father works doesn’t turn out the way he hoped it would. Responsibility is overwhelming, his father is all but present, and his co-junior partner, a foreign doctor, is far more experimented than he is. This internship will force Benjamin to confront his limits… and start his way to adulthood.

Loney & Havender

To experience snow and learn German, the young Vietnamese woman Trúc Lâm moves to a little town in the Erz Mountains. During a guided tour of a mine, she leaves her group and reaches the other side of the mountain through a secondary shaft. The world there is similar to the one she left – only all the people are different. She meets Duc, who is also from Vietnam and whose parents have an Asian snack bar. And she meets a mysterious spirit who offers to make a deal with her to enable her return to her old world.

Princesses

Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.

The Best Man's Wedding

Roro, a foreign worker in Swedish parks, loves his girlfriend but is about to marry another girl to prevent her from being sent back to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Roro's best friend, Måns, has serious problems getting an erection.

Amira & Sam

Sam, a soldier who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, meets Amira when he visits her uncle, Bassam, who had served as Sam's Iraqi translator. Bassam and Sam have a special bond due to their time together in the war. Initially Amira does not trust him because he was an American soldier and her brother was killed by a bomb from American troops in the war. Sam's cousin, Charlie, asks Sam to help him with illegal hedge funds unbeknownst to Sam at the time. Amira is staying with her uncle Bassam since her father died. She sells bootlegged films on the street corner but is forced to stay with Sam after getting busted; immigration officials begin pursuing her. As the film progresses, Sam and Amira fall in love.

In the Heights

The story of Usnavi, a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic or staying in Washington Heights.

Three the Movie

Three stories are intertwined in a land, Friuli, in the North-East of Italy, which extends along a triple border. The stories of Irene, a Carnian, Christian girl; Pavel, Ukrainian and Jewish; Mehdi, Iranian and Muslim. Udine. A beautiful city, but one that is perceived as cold and inhospitable by emigrants. Pavel and Mehdi are illegal immigrants, who share an apartment - and concerns about social matters - in the “ghetto” of Via Roma. In love with Pavel, Irene tries to help them, but her surge of solidarity goes perhaps too far, and she regrets it. Mehdi lives obsessed with an ancient guilt: his fragile soul is attracted to Evil. Predestination and moral choice. Two alternatives? Subjection to freedom of Good or Evil. What will the protagonists choose?

Somers Town

Two teenagers, both newcomers to London, forge an unlikely friendship over the course of a hot summer. Tomo is a runaway from Nottingham; Marek lives in the district of Somers Town, between King's Cross and Euston stations, where his dad is working on a new rail link.

Pathemari

Pathemari features the life of Pallikkal Narayanan who migrated to the Middle-East in the early 1980s, when the Kerala Gulf boom was at its peak.

A Moment in the Reeds

Having moved to Paris for university, Leevi returns to his native Finland for the summer to help his estranged father renovate the family lake house so it can be sold. Tareq, a recent asylum seeker from Syria, has been hired to help with the work, and when Leevi's father has to return to town on business, the two young men establish a connection and embark on a romance set against the idyllic Finnish summer. However, looming over this chance encounter, is the father's imminent return to the lake house, the continuation of Leevi's studies abroad as well as Tareq's complex relationship with his family in Syria.

Aaltra

In this pitch black comedy the rivalry between two neighbors escalates into an all out war. Through a maintenance error on a tractor they both end up, paralyzed, in a wheelchair. It seems they are doomed to stay together. They no longer focus their rage on each other but on the manufacturer of the tractor, in Helsinki. So get ready for a hilarious wheelchair road movie.

Australia Day

On Australia's most controversial national holiday, the lives of three Australians from diverse cultural backgrounds will collide, illuminating contemporary issues of racial tension and national identity that simmer beneath the surface of modern Australia.

Heaven's Gate

Harvard graduate James Averill serves as the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyoming, standing at the center of a conflict between impoverished immigrants and affluent cattle farmers. Politically connected ranchers enlist mercenary Nathan Champion—who is also vying for the affections of local madam Ella Watson—to combat the immigrant uprising. As tensions escalate, both Averill and Champion start to question their decisions.

Das Wunder von Lengede

The film is based on the events surrounding the Lengede mining accident in 1963.

Green Card

Urban horticulturalist Brontë Mitchell has her eye on a gorgeous apartment, but the building's board will rent it only to a married couple. Georges Fauré, a waiter from France whose visa is expiring, needs to marry an American woman to stay in the country. Their marriage of convenience turns into a burden when they must live together to allay the suspicions of the immigration service, as the polar opposites grate on each other's nerves.

Sœur Sourire: Who Killed the Voice of God?

1962. A crystalline voice becomes a planetary tube. A Belgian nun jostles Elvis and the Beatles on the world charts. Her name: Sister Smile. A popstar with the trajectory of a comet who understands her success no more than the double meaning of her words… The harder the fall will be. Even God does not protect sharks' appetites or pretenses of success! Who killed the little voice of God? Here is the tragic story of an innocent voice, of an extraordinary fate, almost of a curse ...

Hungry Hearts

A family of Russian Jews living in New York struggles to survive, while the mother strives to better their lives, but she finds that most of her efforts costs more then they are worth.

Gran Torino

Disgruntled Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski sets out to reform his neighbor, Thao Lor, a Hmong teenager who tried to steal Kowalski's prized possession: a 1972 Gran Torino.

My Beautiful Laundrette

A young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.

Rosetta

Young, impulsive Rosetta lives a hard and stressful life as she struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother. Refusing all charity, she is desperate to maintain a dignified job.

House of Sand and Fog

Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.