The Perfect Story offers a riveting, intimate look at the ethical and moral challenges sparked by the relationship between a foreign correspondent and a young Somali refugee. By revealing the boundaries of journalism and filmmaking, the film questions what stories are told, why, and who gets to tell them.
Ismael AbdulleSelfSahal AbdulleSelf
A 6-year-old Tibetan boy leaves his family and flees to a refugee camp in northern India.
Based on a poem by a Zimbabwean LGBT activist written in response to the gay hate speech that is being perpetuated president Robert Mugabe. The film was shot in South East London UK with a cast of six women from several African countries playing multiple roles in this portrayal of being a lesbian in homophobic Zimbabwe. Five of the actors and the producer are refugees who fled their countries in fear of persecution for their sexuality.
The documentary is a five country-based sequences featuring stories about conflict, migration and the experience of exile; Tibetan women refugees in Dharamshala, India, Syrian refugee family in Tunisia, evicted indigenous women in the Phlippines; Rohingya women in Haryana and Delhi, and Syrian women refugees in Canada.
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.
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.
Follows Mas and Saha, two young Iranian asylum seeker musicians, navigating a frightening new world of immigration detention - where they discover the power of music.
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.
The story behind the infamous downing of an American Black Hawk helicopter by Somali gunmen.
In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.
Australian filmmaker Sophia Turkiewicz investigates why her Polish mother abandoned her and uncovers the truth behind her mother's wartime escape from a Siberian gulag, leaving Sophia to confront her own capacity for forgiveness.
Three juxtaposing stories taking place in Portugal, Austria and Cuba create an intimate and poetic portrait of the daily lives and struggles of the elderly in an unstable world, seen through the eyes of their grandchildren.
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.
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.
Rotem Genossar, a teacher at the Bialik-Rogozin campus in south Tel Aviv, founds a running group for his students, young African refugees whose families fled their homeland and now live in Israel without any legal status. At first running is just a social activity for the students, but it quickly becomes a means to fight for their civil rights, part of a struggle to secure them a place of their own, out of the margins of Israeli society.
The make or break story of a Somali-Australian refugee who went back to where he came from to do battle with ruthless pirates and Islamic militants - and transform his broken homeland into a modern African State.
In 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, made up of impoverished Mayan Indians from the state of Chiapas, took over five towns and 500 ranches in southern Mexico. The government deployed its troops and at least 145 people died in the ensuing battle. Filmmaker Nettie Wild travelled to the country's jungle canyons to film the elusive and fragile life of this uprising.
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.
Examines how the Immigration and Naturalization Service decides who will be granted asylum in the United States. The applicant must have a "well-founded fear" of persecution in his or her home country. Despite true and terrifying stories of torture and mistreatment, it's often up to how well the translator presents the case and how sensitive are the ears of the asylum officer to decide a person's fate.
Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.