Aita Mari (2021)

The Deep Med

The Mediterranean. Because people have been travelling there for thousands of years, it is believed to be without secrets. And yet, far below its surface, lie vast unexplored territories, luxurious gardens worthy of the finest tropical coral reefs. These natural wonders are inaccessible to the traditional diver, in a twilight zone, between 60 and 120 m, where there’s less than 1% of sunlight. If diving at such depths is always a challenge, staying there is a fantasy, a utopia that becomes reality in Planet Mediterranean. In the tradition of Commander Cousteau and his "houses under the sea," the team of diver-photographer Laurent Ballesta is undertaking a new world-record setting mission in complete freedom and without time limit.

At a Depth of Eighteen Meters

Jacques Cousteau's 1942 plunge into the Mediterranean sea

The Face of a City

The stories of four Iranian families who emigrate to Canada and the city they leave behind. As departure time approaches, social spaces become places of memory, fading into the distance.

It Was Hot That Day: A Jandiman Story

Enduring 28 days of relentless construction labor, Frank struggles to prep a house for painting amidst Phoenix's scorching pandemic summer.

Viramundo

Viramundo shows the saga of the northeastern migrants that arrive in São Paulo, beginning with a train arriving and ending with a train leaving São Paulo in a cycle repeated every day. Viramundo's aim was to question why the military coup d'état in Brazil happened without any popular resistance or revolution or reaction of the society.

Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

Our Family

"Our Family" is a film about the time that we can't get back. I left my home along with my friends and family behind in 2017, when I was aged 15 to study in the United States. In some ways I feel like I may have not been best suited to make that decision for myself at the time, but 4 years later, I decided to take this opportunity to reflect on my departure and to reconnect with my family. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I haven't been able to go home to Sikkim in over 2 years. Talking to my parents over WhatsApp, I recorded two interviews with them discussing stories from the collective past of our family as well as individual ones. I was able to discover the love story my parents were a part of before I was even born, recollect the bits and pieces of my childhood that I'm beginning to forget, and process how my departure has affected my relationship with my parents and the course of our lives.

A Tale of Two Kitchens

Two countries, two restaurants, one vision. At Gabriela Cámara's acclaimed Contramar in Mexico City, the welcoming, uniformed waiters are as beloved by diners as the menu featuring fresh, local seafood caught within 24 hours. The entire staff sees themselves as part of an extended family. Meanwhile at Cala in San Francisco, Cámara hires staff from different backgrounds and cultures, including ex-felons and ex-addicts, who view the work as an important opportunity to grow as individuals. A Tale of Two Kitchens explores the ways in which a restaurant can serve as a place of both dignity and community.

Homefront

A family with five children flees the war raging in their home village on the Russian border. They end up in Mshanets, a farming village on the other side of the country, remote and unknown. Here the family starts building a new home. At the same time, two documentary makers come to the village, looking for a story. In the Lymar family they find the ideal characters for their film. But one day, when the renovation of their house is almost finished, the family disappears. The filmmakers go in search of their characters and along the way they try to find an answer to the question: what does a person need to feel at home?

The Catastrophe Garden

It is a daring idea: to grow food from old mattresses in a desolate camp at the edge of a war zone. When a refugee scientist meets two quirky professors, they must confront their own catastrophes - and make a garden grow. Short film now streaming on Waterbear.com.

The Middle Sea

A peculiar personal journey along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the inland sea that bathes the beaches of three continents, passing through the port of Marseille, the Rock of Gibraltar, Algeria and Syria; an artistic and experimental collage made up of thoughts, memories and emotions.

The Hearing

After crossing 11 countries irregularly to seek asylum in Canada, Peggy, Simon and their three children are waiting for the hearing that will determine whether they get refugee status or not. Having fled political repression in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the family tries to rebuild a peaceful life in Montreal, in spite of the constant threat of deportation. Between ghosts from the past, hopes for the future, a complex legal maze and seemingly endless trial, the film delves into the struggle of the Nkunga Mbala family to remain in Canada. Offering unprecedented access to their hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board, the film unveils the opaque process of claiming asylum in Canada.

Fale Comigo Verão: O diário de um cineasta amador

For years, together with his partners from the production company O Quadro, he has been betting on cinema as a tool to explore the typical issues of youth. In this film, Evandro Scorsin turns the cameras on himself as he deals with the dilemmas of the passing of time and the imposition of adulthood. In an exercise in autofiction where cinema and life merge, the film is also a cinematic love letter to the beloved masters (especially Nicholas Ray). Coming and going between two countries and times, it records the vertigo of displacement and the reinventions inherent to an immigrant experience.

Méditerranée : la face immergée des volcans

With the help of diver and biologist Laurent Ballesta, a scientific expedition explores three sunken Italian volcanic sites in the Mediterranean.

Pythéas, l'astronome voyageur

Plot unavailable

Sardine Run, le plus grand festin de l'océan

Plot unavailable

Notes about identity

Plot unavailable

A 3 Minute Hug

As daylight breaks between the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, undocumented migrants and their relatives, divided by a wall, prepare to participate in an activist event. For three minutes, they’ll embrace in no man’s land for the briefest and sweetest of reunions.

Stranger at the Gate

A U.S. Marine plots a terrorist attack on a small-town American mosque, but his plan takes an unexpected turn when he comes face to face with the people he sets out to kill.

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life

A silent documentary which follows a branch of the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia as they and their herds make their epic seasonal journey to better pastures.

I Know a Place

Young people who decide to leave their home to seek opportunities for the future face different difficulties on a daily basis. The inevitable estrangement with family and lifelong friends. The constant lack of understanding, the coldness and individualism of the new city. The stress and even the feeling of being a stranger back home. This journey to the future sets out issues about identity, nostalgia and courage, while they fight to find their place in a changeable world.

Someone Like Me

After 11 strangers unite to help a gay youth escape life-threatening violence in Uganda, the unexpected pandemic and conflicting opinions over his best interests test the limits of their commitment and jeopardize his fresh start in Canada.

La Grotte Cosquer, un chef-d'œuvre en sursis

A short distance from Marseille, at Cape Morgiou, in the depths of the Calanques massif, lies the Cosquer cave, discovered only about thirty years ago by a diver, Henri Cosquer. With its bestiary of hundreds of paintings and engravings - horses, bison, jellyfish, penguins - the only underwater decorated cave in the world allows us to learn a little more about Mediterranean societies 30,000 years ago. Today, threatened by rising water levels accelerated by global warming, this jewel of the Upper Paleolithic is in danger of being swallowed up. To save the cave from disappearing, the Ministry of Culture has chosen to digitize it. From this virtual duplicate, a replica has been made on the surface to offer the public a reconstruction that allows them to admire these masterpieces.

The Rise and Fall of the Etruscans

For eight centuries, between the 9th and 1st century BC, the Etruscans, inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, were one of the most powerful peoples of the Mediterranean basin, and when they disappeared they left behind impressive necropolises, vestiges of sanctuaries and even entire cities. How did they attain such power? How far did they extend their dominion and influence? What were the causes of their decline?

I Am Rohingya: A Genocide in Four Acts

"I Am Rohingya" is a chronicle of the journey made by 14 young refugees, who share their endeavouring experiences amidst the Myanmar internal genocide in the Burma region, with Rohingya muslisms being the target. Sharing their personal lives and showing the struggles in the adjusting process of starting a new life in Canada, the children will be tasked with depicting on stage the horror of real life events. It's upon these youth to share the stories of their people and be sure no one forgets about them.

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.

Return to Cuba

After 18 years living in Italy, the Cuban Barbara Ramos returns to live in her homeland. In the town of Santa Clara, she discovers through the projects of family and friends what has changed in Cuba but also what has not and will likely never change. Shot over a period of three years - the time it took Barbara to build her dream house - RETURN TO CUBA chronicles her life in the wake of Raul Castro's liberal reforms and reconciliation with the United States of America. A light-hearted yet energetic movie positively demonstrating that finding happiness is possible in today's Cuba!

Oaxacalifornia: The Return

The Mejia family emigrated from Oaxaca to Fresno, California 40 years ago. Filmmaker Trisha ZIff filmed the family in 1996, and returns now to see the changes that have settled over them, and follows the family on their return to Mexico.

Island of the Hungry Ghosts

Christmas Island, Australia is home to one of the largest land migrations on earth—that of forty million crabs journeying from jungle to sea. But the jungle holds another secret: a high-security facility that indefinitely detains individuals seeking asylum.

The Land Between

Plot unavailable