Site 2

Fugitive, Where Are You Running to?

Life for refugees and migrants stuck at Calais: Filmed amidst the camps, the beaches, the sea and the sky, impressions of the lived experiences of these people wavering between despair and hope.

District Zero

In Zaatari, Jordan – one of the world’s biggest refugee camps – Maamun owns a little shop: a small white container aligned in a seemingly endless row of identical containers. There he repairs mobile phones of the numerous Syrian refugees. They are anxious to retrieve the devices’ content which consists of memories from the past, a time when the war had yet to begin and they were not yet refugees but just ordinary people. Maamun and his friend Karim invent a new way to satisfy their customers: they buy a printer to print the photos, allowing the camp dwellers to retrieve some of their identity. The film provides an insight into the daily goings-on in a refugee camp.

After Spring

Close to 80,000 Syrian refugees live in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, the second-largest such camp in the world. Fifty-eight percent of its inhabitants are children. After Spring immerses us in the rhythms of the camp, the role of the aid workers, and the daily lives of two families as they contemplate an uncertain future.

Refugee

A harrowing account of Europe's migrant crisis. A family of Syrian refugees separated by the borders of Europe, fight to be reunited as they migrant from Syria to Germany.

The Missing Picture

Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.

Cambodia, After Farewell

Hope and closure are not always words that come to mind when discussing a film about the Khmer Rouge, whose bloody, fanatical rule from 1975 to 1979 resulted in the deaths of more than two million people from starvation, disease, torture and executions. But these two do come together, despite the pain of memories, in Cambodia After Farewell, a well-acclaimed, 100-minute documentary by French Cambodian director Iv Charbonneau-Ching and Jeremy Knittel to mark 4 decades since the Khmer Rouge took control of the Southeast Asian country to put in place the purest form of communism and the ideal agrarian society. The documentary follows the journey back to Cambodia – and into the past – of the family of Iv Charbonneau-Ching, with his mother and aunt, as they reconstruct, piece by piece, what happened to the family members they lost to the Khmer Rouge.

Cambodia, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge

Between April, 1975 and January, 1979, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people in Cambodia. A quarter of the population were wiped out in one of the most brutal and virulent genocides of the twentieth century. This new film explores the life of Pol Pot, the ever-smiling, obsessively secretive leader of the Khmer Rouge. What drove him to inflict such a radical experiment on his own people? How did the Khmer Rouge turn from a band of nationalist revolutionaries into a ruthless killing machine? And why did the West stand by and let it happen?
 As an international tribunal in Cambodia finally brings the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice, it's time to re-examine the gruesome legacy of Pol Pot.

Rain Falls from Earth: Surviving Cambodia's Darkest Hour

On April 17, 1975, the face of Cambodia would forever be changed. As Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into the capital city of Phnom Penh, the unsuspecting people of Cambodia had little idea they would be forced into a living nightmare that would last nearly four years. Rain Falls From Earth is a story of courage, a story of survival and a story of eventual triumph over the Communist regime that was responsible for the deaths of over two million people. The voices of many Cambodians are heard as they convey their thoughts, ideas and emotions - the very things they were forced to abandon in the "killing fields" of Cambodia. Their stories are an eyewitness account to genocide.

The madman of the desert

This documentary tells the story of Tateh Lehbib, a Saharawi refugee who after studying Renewable Energy at the University of Algiers and then a master's degree in energy efficiency at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, has designed a type of shelter made with plastic bottles filled with sand. This innovative circular shelter aims to improve the harsh living conditions experienced in the desert in Tindouf, reducing internal temperature and offering a better resistance to sandstorm, while having an eco-friendly purpose by reusing plastic bottles.

Sadig: my Sahrawi friend

Habub and Marcos establish a relationship through “video letters” during the wintertime. Through these videos, we see what daily life is like in the Sahrawi refugee camps and, more importantly, how important the friendship between these two kids is.

Waiting for Cambodia

Since the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, Cambodia has struggled to find its uniqueness and rebuild its society. Waiting For Cambodia features interviews and discussions with a variety of citizens, many of who represent a face of change and hope, and many who remain dedicated to the Khmer Rouge ideology. Images of cultural beauty are displayed through ritualistic dance and song, serving as a powerful accompaniment to the rough images of conflict. The attempts to regain culture, individual rights, and freedom are prevalent themes within the film, and footage of Cambodian relief camps and liberation organizations are displayed as efforts of change.

Cambodia: The Prince And The Prophecy

CAMBODIA: THE PRINCE AND THE PROPHECY explores the years of Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s rule, his juggling for peace, his charisma and contradictions. Following the Prince’s overthrow in 1970, the film traces Cambodia’s destruction during the five years of war before Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge came to power and launched their revolution… As a central theme, the film and its sequel CAMBODIA/KAMPUCHEA feature exclusive interviews with Prince Sihanouk, and focus on his pivotal role in shaping Cambodia’s fate.

Cambodia/Kampuchea

CAMBODIA/KAMPUCHEA draws on unique propaganda film and archival material from the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam and other sources. This is set against the grim realities of the Kampuchean tragedy. As a continuing theme, the film features exclusive interviews with Prince Sihanouk, who offers explanations for and insights into the role he has played in the fate of his luckless country. This definitive film study delves to the roots of the conflict, making sense of the madness, the politics and contradictions. It captures the epic spirit and passions of a people when a whole world is overturned.

Exode

Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia

John Pilger vividly reveals the brutality and murderous political ambitions of the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge totalitarian regime which bought genocide and despair to the people of Cambodia while neighboring countries, including Australia, shamefully ignored the immense human suffering and unspeakable crimes that bloodied this once beautiful country.

Men Who Have Lost Their Roots

Hungarian refugees in Austrian camps after the failed revolution in Budapest.

The Lost Kids of Calais

Rafi, Salman, Said and Ali are all under 18 years old. They come from Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan. After months of wandering, fleeing wars in their country, they found themselves stuck in Calais, where they are trying to survive, waiting for something better. Their dream: to get to England. How? By climbing into containers or slipping onto the axles of trucks, risking their lives. Who cares about these isolated minors in the Calais Jungle, the largest slum in Europe?

Cinema Dadaab

In one of the world's largest and oldest refugee camps, Dadaab, the inhabitans survive by watching films and dreaming. The refugees cannot leave the camp, but they let their minds escape the harsh reality: by going to the simple cinema hall run by Abdikafi Mohamed, the film's protagonist.

Life on the Border

The fate of thousands of people is unified under the tarpaulins of the refugee camps in Kobanê and in Shingal. Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi has given eight children the opportunity to use a camera to tell their own stories. Each film gives us a glimpse into the plight of the children, as seen through their own eyes. Their stories tell of young people with their whole lives ahead of them, though they’ve already lost almost everything. At a certain point, the film crew leaves the camp and follows the 13-year-old Mahmod and his sister in the search for his parent‘s house in Kobanê. The town has been ravaged by the war and all the children find is rubble. The eight films reveal the courage and openness of the young filmmakers, who share their stories with great intensity, realism and poetry, despite their harsh fate.

Another Kind of Girl

Filmed during a media workshop for Syrian girls in Jordan's Za'atari Refugee Camp, 17-year-old Khaldiya meditates on how the camp has opened up new horizons and given her a sense of courage that she lacked in Syria.