THE STORIES BEHIND THE NUMBERS
In the headlines, migration is presented through numbers, figures and geopolitical considerations, while personal stories are forgotten. GLOBAL NOMADS curates 25 European films that give a face to the refugee crisis and focus on the stories behind the numbers. Thanks to this project, the films will be promoted to audiences worldwide and distributed on all major VOD platforms on 20 June 2021 – World Refugee Day.
OUT ON 20 JUNE 2021
World Refugee DayWITH THE SUPPORT OF
REFUGEE LULLABY
Director: Ronit Kertsner
Year: 2019
IMDb
Country of Origin: Austria, Israel
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: DE and EN
Fall 2015. Israeli director Ronit Kertsner sees a YouTube-video that goes viral: Hans Breuer, Austria’s last wandering shepherd, drives an Arab family to the Hungarian border. He sings Yiddish lullabies for the children to lighten their mood. Ronit starts filming Hans and over the period of three years creates the portrait of an unusual character, who overcomes his own inherited trauma in a highly political and human way. Refugee Lullaby is a film about an unusual way of living, moving encounters, and devoted solidarity.
Undocument
Director: Amin Bakhshian, Kyla Simone Bruce
Year: 2017
IMDb
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Genre: Fiction
Available languages: Farsi, EN
UNDOCUMENT is an episodic feature, following 4 stories of longing & love, immigration & identity. The vision of an Iranian and a European director, dealing with the complex theme of illegal immigration or ‘undocumented migrants.’ Each story is set at a different stage of the migrants’ journey, in three different countries: Iran, Greece and England.
Broken Land
Director: Stéphanie Barbey, Luc Peter
Year: 2014
IMDb
Country of Origin: Switzerland
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN
Out in desert-like nature, living in the shadows of the immense fence that is erected to control Mexican immigration, seven Americans tell how the border transforms their lives. They observe the haunting traces left by the crossing migrants – people they never come face to face with – as they confide their fear, defiance and at times even compassion.
Another News Story
Director: Orban Wallace
Year: 2017
IMDb
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: AR, EN, ES, DE, NL, IT
“We went to follow refugees in Europe, we found the media.” The film takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis. When faced with immeasurable suffering, how do journalists balance their humanity with professional objectivity?
MR GAY SYRIA
Director: Ayse Toprak
Year: 2017
IMDb
Country of Origin: Turkey, France, Germany
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN
Mr. Gay Syria follows two gay Syrian refugees, who try rebuilding their lives. Will their dream come true or will the harsh consequences of being gay in a Muslim world shatter it to pieces?
DESTIERROS
Director: Hubert Caron-Guay
Year: 2018
IMDb
Country of Origin: Canada
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: ES, EN, FR
Border mechanisms that act on migrants are multiple. From shelter to shelter, boarding on trains, migrants aim up north across Mexico to reach the United States and Canada. During the U.S election, migrants are more than aware that it could be their last chance to cross the border. In complete immersion, Destierros draws a path of reclusion. A path where time still the longest road between two places.
69 MINUTES OF 86 DAYS
Director: Egil Haaskjold Larsen
Year: 2017
IMDb
Country of Origin: Norway
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: AR, EN
On a path littered with lifejackets, in the middle of a crowd of people on the run, three-year-old Lean slowly emerges. She understands the gravity of the situation, but filled with childlike wonder, she continues her journey. For every step she takes, she emanates a longed-for feeling of hope. To Lean, it’s a step closer to her grandfather in Sweden.
SEA SORROW
Director: Vanessa Redgrave
Year: 2017
IMDb
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, DE, FR
“Sea Sorrow” marks Vanessa Redgrave’s debut as a film director and is a very personal, dynamic meditation on the current global refugee crisis mixing past and present, documentary and drama in its its reflection on the importance of human rights.
IRAQI ODYSSEY
Director: Samir
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: Switzerland
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: DE, EN, FR, IT, NL , PT
Tracing the emigrations of his family over more than half a century, this riveting documentary epic from acclaimed expatriate Iraqi filmmaker Samir pays moving homage to the frustrated democratic dreams of people successively plagued by the horrors of dictatorship, war, and the foreign occupation of Iraq.
LAMPEDUSA IN WINTER
Director: Jakob Brossmann
Year: 2015
IMDb
Country of Origin: Austria
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: DE, EN, IT, FR, PT, ES-419, DA, SV, NL
The Italian “refugee island” of Lampedusa is in the firm grip of winter tristesse. The Tourists have left, the remaining refugees fight to be taken to the mainland.
The tiny community at the edge of Europe is engaged in a desperate fight for dignity, and for solidarity with those who many consider the cause of the ongoing crisis: the African boat people.
SONITA
Director: Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami
Year: 2015
IMDb
Country of Origin: Germany
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, PT, NO
If 18-year old Sonitahad a say in things, Michael Jackson would be her father and Rihanna her mother. She captures her dream of being a famous rapper in her scrapbook. For the time being, her only fans are the other teenage girls in a Tehran shelter. There, Sonita, a refugee from Afghanistan, gets counseling for the traumas she has suffered and guidance in shaping her future. Her family has a very different future planned for her: as a bride she’s worth $9,000. What’s more, women aren’t allowed to sing in Iran. How can Sonitastill succeed in making her dreams come true?
THE INVISIBLE CITY: KAKUMA
Director: Lieve Corthouts
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: Belgium
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN , NL , FR , ES, SV
Today, the big refugee camps in the Horn of Africa have much more to offer than humanitarian aid. As one of the fastest growing cities of the region, Kakumacamp can mean a new beginning, a way out, offering hope for a better future. The Invisible City [Kakuma] links the coming of age of three teenagers with the coming of age of refugee camp Kakuma.
RAVING IRAN
Director: Susanne Regina Meures
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: Switzerland
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, DE, ES, SV, NO, NL
Anoosh and Arash are at the center of Tehran’s illegal, underground techno scene. When Anoosh is arrested, there seems to be no hope left. But then they receive a phone call from the Streetparade in Zürich, the biggest techno festival in the world. Once landed in Switzerland, the haze of the instant euphoria evaporates quickly when the seriousness of the situation starts to dawn on them.
EVERY FACE HAS A NAME
Director: Magnus Gertten
Year: 2015
IMDb
Country of Origin: Sweden
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, PT, DE, NL
On April 28, 1945, ferries with survivors from the German concentration camps arrive at the harbour of Malmö, Sweden. As the survivors take their first steps in freedom, news teams film them. Now, 70 years later, the survivors see this footage for the first time and recognise themselves. They relive the happiness, confusion and insecurity of that extraordinary day when life began again.
A SYRIAN LOVE STORY
Director: Sean McAllister
Year: 2015
IMDb
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, PT, PL
Filmed over five years, a Syrian love story charts an incredible odyssey to political freedom. For Raghda and Amer, it’s a journey of hope, dreams and despair: for the revolution, their homeland and each other.
GAZA SURF CLUB
Director: Philip Gnadt, Mickey Yamine
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: Germany
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, FR, PT, NL, PL
In a country locked between Egypt and Israel, Gaza’s youth are drawn to their beaches. Weary of the daily ‘state of emergency’ they seek meaning and perspective to their lives through surfing.
SILVERED WATER
(MA’A AL-FIDDA)
Director: Wiam Bedirxan, Ossama Mohammed
Year: 2014
IMDb
Country of Origin: France
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, FR, PT, NL, PL
In Syria, everyday, YouTubers film then die; others kill then film. In Paris, driven by my inexhaustible love for Syria, I find that I can only film the sky and edit the footage posted. From within the tension between my estrangement in France and the revolution, an encounter happened. A young Kurdish woman from Homs began to chat with me, asking: ‘If your camera were here, in Homs, what would you be filming?’. Silvered Water is the story of that encounter.
STOP-OVER
(L’ESCALE)
Director: Kaveh Bakhtiari
Year: 2013
IMDb
Country of Origin: Switzerland / France
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: FR, EN, PT, PL
In the course of living long months with a group of Iranian illegals in Athens, the director examines this radical choice of pursuing a better life through the most perilous of possibilities: clandestinity.
ALIVE!
(GJÄLLE)
Director: Artan Minarolli
Year: 2009
IMDb
Country of Origin: Austria / Albania / France
Genre: Fiction
Available languages: AB, DE, FR, EN, NL, SV
In a country where tradition is constantly at war with modernity, Kolli is a college student set on enjoying his youth to the fullest. When his father dies and he is forced to assume responsibility for an ancient crime, Kolli is thrust into the gruesome, feudal heart of contemporary Albania and is forced to leave the country. Based on a true story.
BETWEEN FENCES
(BEIN GDEROT)
Director: Avi Mograbi
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: France
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: HE, EN, FR, ES, PL, PT, DE, IT
Avi Mograbi and Chen Alon meet African asylum-seekers in a detention facility in the middle of the Negev desert. Together, they question the status of the refugees in Israel using ‘Theater of the Opressed’ techniques. What leads men and women to leave everything behind and go towards the unknown? Why does Israel, land of the refugees, refuse to take into consideration the situation of the exiled, thrown onto the roads by war, genocide and persecution? Can the Israelis working with the asylum seekers put themselves in the refugee’s shoes? Can their collective unconscious be conjured up?
PARADISE! PARADISE!
Director: Kurdwin Ayub
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: Austria
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: DE, EN, ES, FR, SV, DA, NL
Vienna, Austria. A doctor´s office, two young men, patients; the doctor introduces his daughter, Kurdwin, who is planning a reportage on him and Kurdistan. Thus begins a complex, soft melodrama with home video moments: a family and its transnational economizing of feelings in the interaction with powerful militant conflicts.
THOSE WHO JUMP
(LES SAUTEURS)
Director: Abou Bakar Sidibé, Moritz Siebert, EstephanWagner
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: Denmark
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: ES, EN, FR, DE, DA, NL, PT, NO
Mount Gurugu overlooks the Spanish enclave of Melilla on northern Africa’s Mediterranean coast. The European Union and Africa are separated here by a high-security border facility consisting of three fences. Refugees, mostly from the sub-Saharan region, live in the tree-covered foothills, from where they try to cross the land border between Morocco and Spain. One of them is Abou Bakar Sidibé from Mali, who in Les Sauteurs is both the protagonist and the one doing the documenting.
NEW WORLD
Director: Elzbieta Benkowska, Lukasz Ostalski, Michal Wawrzecki
Year: 2015
IMDb
Country of Origin: Poland
Genre: Drama
Available languages: PL, EN, NL, SV
NEW WORLD are three moving stories of three young people trying to find their place in a better world … in Poland. Żanna ran off with her child from Belarus, a land plunged into chaos, leaving her husband – a well-known oppositionist. Azzam worked for the Polish army in Afghanistan as a translator, due to which he was considered a traitor. Now he’s trying to cope with war trauma. Rejected by her family, Wiera had left Ukraine to begin a new life when suddenly her past started haunting.
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
Director: Tim de Keersmaecker
Year: 2016
IMDb
Country of Origin: Belgium
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: NL, EN, SV, PT
Doctor Bartolo took responsibility for Omar, an 18-year-old Tunisian who stranded on Lampedusa’s coast. He offers Omar a family, a home and a job as an interpreter in the local detention centre. Around the same time Adam, a 16-year-old from Ghana, is taken in by a hotelkeeper, who gives him a job as the hotel’s valet. Both boys have been lucky. Or haven’t they? Lampedusa: promised land or prison in the Mediterranean Sea
WALLS
(MUROS)
Director: Pablo Iraburu, Migueltxo Molina
Year: 2015
IMDb
Country of Origin: Spain
Genre: Documentary
Available languages: EN, FR, DE, NL, SV
The world is increasingly more divided by walls. There are human beings on either side of them. Brilliant editing connects people living and working on different sides of decisive walls between Mexico/U.S., Spain/Morocco, Israel/Palastine and South Africa/ Zimbabwe. A true cinematic experience not entering the geopolitical discussion. But exploring walls as a global issue.
EXTRAS
— Carlos Fuentes Macías
PRODUCED BY
