Ten-year-old Moises has just immigrated to California from Mexico. He doesn't speak English, but he's good at math, so he hopes to do well on his first math test in the USA. Using untrained child actors from public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, “Immersion” plunges its audience into the visceral experience of a child who cannot understand his teacher. The film puts a human face on the debate about the education of English Language Learners.
Angela Carlos De SilinMotherNabor AcevedoFather
Theodora DunlapMs. PetersonGerardo AcevedoGerardoAntonio AcostaJanitorThe story is set during the early 1980s in a small town in rural Spain. El Chiqui is a talented young man about to debut in the local bullring, expected to continue the legacy of his family name. But that is not what he truly wants. His secret relationship with a young man from the town, Nicolás, offers an escape from the village, leaving the family pressures behind.
Lina is a twelve-year-old Syrian girl who has just arrived at the home of Sonia, an activist who has been in refugee camps in Greece. Lina suffers a major trauma due to some episodes that she has suffered during her exile trip and that prevent her from communicating on a regular basis.
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.
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.
Karma, an international high school student from Sikkim struggles to fit in and hold onto his cultural identity when he is stuck at home with his host sibling, Alex.
Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.
Sister Tse is brought to New York by a Snakehead, a human smuggler. Although she is indebted to the crime family responsible for her transport, her survival instincts help her gain favor with the matriarch, and she rises quickly in the ranks. Soon Tse must reconcile her success with her real reason for coming to America—to find the child that was taken from her. In the end, Sister Tse must draw on the strength she found in transforming her victimhood into power.
Primo and Secondo, two immigrant brothers, pin their hopes on a banquet honoring Louis Prima to save their struggling restaurant.
Immigrants from around the world enter Los Angeles every day, with hopeful visions of a better life, but little notion of what that life may cost. Their desperate scenarios test the humanity of immigration enforcement officers. In Crossing Over, writer-director Wayne Kramer explores the allure of the American dream, and the reality that immigrants find – and create -- in 21st century L.A.
The lives of an American expat and a half Japanese construction worker living in rural Japan are forever changed over the course of three days as they engage in an unexpected romance.
Leonidas and Vangelis travel to Munich to work in the successful restaurant of there uncle.
A group of Spanish boys take advantage of a high roof to ogle a sunbathing woman, but the presence of an adjacent male nude complicates matters.
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
In 1980, the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.
Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.
A British ex-convict in colonial Australia and his fragile wife, haunted by the past crime that binds them, struggle to rebuild their lives when a young newcomer stirs long-buried passions and secrets.
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
Lorna is a young Albanian woman in a marriage of convenience with Claudy, a heroin addict. Just as Lorna is about to be granted Belgian citizenship, Claudy finds the strength to detox; this presents a problem not only for Lorna, but for the criminal who brokered the deal.
The cross-frontier migrant's life 'within the system' - an endless, featureless, futureless round of queues - becomes even bleaker in December. Bipul doesn't want to admit it, but the arrival of Lidia, a Russian girl makes a difference. Hope? Surely not! A future? Get real! December is also the ninth month of Martina's pregnancy. But, just when the situation seems hopeless, help is at hand. A Christmas story.
A fugitive hides from justice among smugglers in the deep jungle of an exotic island, but things become complicated when he falls in love with a local cabaret dancer.