The Shelter

Brazillians Like Me

The encounter with a growing, and mostly undocumented, brazilian community allows us to bear witness to its energy, its vivacity, and its diversity. This film attempts to work for a larger acceptance of foreigners in their land of exile.

Urban Amazons

Modern Amazons are fierce heroines. They are ready to fight for what is important to them. Without explaining, without compromising, always persisting. They fight for victory in the ring for acceptance, and too, for fellow sufferers and humanity.

Locked in a Box: Immigration Detention

follows the stories of individuals held in the U.S. Immigration detention system and those who visit them. The film traces the lives of several individuals who fled their homelands in search of safety and freedom only to end up in U.S. prisons under a mandatory bed quota system run by Immigration Customs & Enforcement.

Boiling Point

Boiling Point (original title Kiehumispiste) describes the different reactions the Finnish people had to the large immigration amounts in 2015-2016.

Portrait of a Wind-up Maker

Chema is an expat architect from Spain who lives in Amsterdam. He has built up a new life there as a wind-up toy maker. He creates small pieces of art from recycle items.

Okinawa/Santos

During World War II, many Japanese immigrants in Santos, Brazil, were forced to move to another place. Matsubayashi draws attention to the fact that 60% of the immigrants were from Okinawa. Based on testimonies from interviewees, this film reveals the hidden historical relationship between Okinawa and Brazil.

Stranger

In the ‘poor crescent’ around Brussels one child in three lives on the poverty line. But they can find refuge with BX Brussels of Vincent Kompany – a sports and social project. Stranger follows recent immigrant Senegalese football coach Moussa as he struggles to give them hope in their sport … and in their life.

Balance

Anna, a twelve-year-old Ukrainian gymnast, has fled her war-torn country and recently settled in Montreal with her mother, younger brother, and grandmother. Confronted by the past, the challenges of exile, and a deep need for belonging, she seeks to rebuild her identity and regain her balance. Through her child’s perspective, the documentary explores the reality of life after war, questioning what endures and what is missing, even when one has found refuge.

We Never Left

Set during the Lebanese revolution, WE NEVER LEFT portrays a heart-wrenching duality between Beirut and New York, an impassioned testament to the Lebanese diaspora’s unrequited but irrepressible love for their homeland.

March of the Penguins

Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!

The Fall of the I-Hotel

The Fall of the I-Hotel brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the International Hotel's tenants culminated a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown. The Fall of the I-Hotel works on several levels. It not only documents the struggle to save the I-Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.

Second Hand Heroes

Documentary about thrift shops in Berne, Switzerland and how they want people to recycle and re-use instead of throw away.

Nomad Solitude

In their vehicle, Laurie, Kristy and Linda live alone on the American roads. Like thousands of modern American nomads who can no longer afford to pay for their housing. With no money to spare, these three sixty-year old women are fleeing, in their own way, a part of their history that has left a deep mark on them. Driving away, they try to regain some form of peace. But as the miles and seasons pass, despite their impressive temerity and resilience, their quest for a better future is challenged by unexpected events that hit a country in crisis. Will they nevertheless manage, at the end of the road, to find the serenity they are looking for, in order to become someone again?

Mama Rosa

Rosa is from Croatia and lives in Switzerland, with her husband who depends on her care. She takes care of everything. Her children have grown up and want to leave home. Rosa stays behind alone.

Someone Besides You

Along with several courageous psychiatrists and their clients, the author sets out to film a documentary road movie that takes him to Switzerland, Europe, and the U.S. On their travels in mobile homes, they explore the depths of the human psyche in search of answers to the question: What is the human mind and how does it behave in psychotic extreme situations?

Journey to the Safest Place on Earth

Over 350,000 tons of highly radioactive waste and spent fuel rods are in temporary storage on site at nuclear power complexes and at intermediate storage sites all over the world. More than 10,000 additional tons join them every year. It is the most dangerous waste man has ever produced. Waste that requires storage in a safe final repository for hundreds of thousands of years. Out of reach of humanity and other living creatures. The question is, where? Together with Swiss-British nuclear physicist Charles McCombie, who has been searching for a safe final storage site for highly radioactive nuclear waste for thirty-five years, director Edgar Hagen investigates the limitations and contradictions involved in this project of global significance. Supporters and opponents of nuclear energy struggle for solutions whilst dogmatic worldviews are assailed by doubt

Sunflower Seeds

A group of children living on the streets of Athens. Among them is Sayid, a twelve-year-old boy, who works all day selling sunflower seeds in the city’s parks and squares. His existence borders on absolute poverty, as he goes looking for food at soup kitchens. His daily routine in the chaotic capital of Greece is a continuous struggle for survival. At the same time, however, he manages to find and enjoy the freedom the city streets can offer. Sayid, along with his friends who are all immigrants from Afghanistan, escape their desperation by clinging onto their hopes. With them, he plays innocent childhood games and dreams of a better future: He wants to leave for Northern Europe, to go to school, and to get a decent job when he grows up. Sayid is trapped in Greece, a country plagued by a financial crisis, increasing unemployment, rampant xenophobia, and racist violence. Sayid doesn’t mince his words: “I’ve been here for about two years, and it feels like twenty.”

90 Miles

Having grown up within the Cuban Revolution, in 1980, Juan Carlos Zaldívar was a 13-year-old "pioneer" jeering in the streets at the thousands of "Marielitos" leaving the island by boat for the United States. Within weeks, he was a Marielito himself, headed with the rest of his family for a new life in Miami. Now a U.S.-based filmmaker, Zaldívar recounts the strange twist of fate that took him across one of the world's most treacherous stretches of water in 90 Miles, a new documentary having its broadcast premiere on PBS's acclaimed P.O.V. series in the summer of 2003. As related by Zaldívar in the intensely personal and evocative 90 Miles, arrival in South Florida is only the beginning of the family's struggles to comprehend the full meaning of their passage into exile. What follows is an intimate and uneasy accounting of the historical forces that have split the Cuban national family in two, and which shape the passage of values from one generation to the next.

2017 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary

Not My Job

The documentary follows the life of Farroukh, a young Tajik immigrant who lives in Moscow outskirts with his family and does odd jobs in dreams of becoming an actor.