2017 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary

Parrot at the Milk Bar

A humorous observation in Barcelona’s immigrant neighbourhood El Raval. Four barber shops, four places of remembrance, strange time and space capsules inhabited by people who left their home to find a better one, while the Spaniards are about to leave their own country themselves.

Pajaritos

Through dances and games, migrant boys and girls who live in a shelter in Reynosa, on the US-Mexico border, shared their dreams and stories of hope with us.

Viramundo

Viramundo shows the saga of the northeastern migrants that arrive in São Paulo, beginning with a train arriving and ending with a train leaving São Paulo in a cycle repeated every day. Viramundo's aim was to question why the military coup d'état in Brazil happened without any popular resistance or revolution or reaction of the society.

Cycle of the Seasons

Thirst overcomes the hordes of Wildebeest and Zebra moving through Kenya's Masai Mara game reserve on their spectacular annual migration. With the cycle of the seasons comes the dry months, the water of the marsh receded. Now the residents of the marsh face a time of hardship, food will be scarce, until the next rains fall.

Viacrucis Migrante

Vol spécial

Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.

Sardine Run, le plus grand festin de l'océan

On Our Doorstep

On Our Doorstep delves deep into an aspect of the refugee crisis that rarely reached the press. With NGOs being blocked by red tape and the absence of any positive action by French or British authorities, the film is a behind-the-scenes look at the unprecedented grassroots movement that rose to aid the refugees in Calais, and the community that sprang up there, before it was forcefully demolished. This is the story of what happens when young and inexperienced citizens are forced to devise systems and structures to support 10,000 refugees; and are left unguided to face the moral and emotional conflicts, blurred lines and frequent grey areas of giving aid to vulnerable people. People who do not want to be there. It questions whether the aims of the volunteers were met, and whether these aims ultimately served the refugees' needs.

Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

Migración

Almost eight years ago the family of Marcela Gómez separated. His parents and younger sister emigrated to the United States and lived in Cali, Colombia. While reconstructing the history of her family through the home movies they sent her in the mail, Marcela questioned the phenomenon of third world migration to the great powers and how these powers assume an immigrant.

Frontera Sur

On the border, the line as principle of property and belonging reaches an extreme dimension where it physically defines the sphere of its relations. Those who transgress it reconstruct these imaginary lines on a daily basis, redefining the traditional geography and occupying the non-spaces where others live in a temporary form of existence. These others, the non-citizens, are phantasmtic, exchangeable parts of a flexible market. Made invisible, they are permanently controlled persons. Under the pretext of a greater civilian security, they are kept clear from the public spaces reserved for the citizens with rights and pushed into non-public spaces, which are run by state and military surveillance, multinational operations servicing a European market and non-governmental organisations.

Crossroads at the Edge of Worlds

This video research is based on a trip to Morocco in July 2005, during which the director documented irregular migration transiting through Morocco, as well as their control. This geographical project focuses on the main migratory axes: Oujda, entry point for migrants in Morocco; Tangier, from where migrants can try to cross the strait or the fences of Ceuta; Rabat, organization space; and Laayoune, the closest point to the Canaries. The video questions the nature and meaning of these extraterritorial enclaves that structure the Moroccan territory.

A Tale of Two Kitchens

Two countries, two restaurants, one vision. At Gabriela Cámara's acclaimed Contramar in Mexico City, the welcoming, uniformed waiters are as beloved by diners as the menu featuring fresh, local seafood caught within 24 hours. The entire staff sees themselves as part of an extended family. Meanwhile at Cala in San Francisco, Cámara hires staff from different backgrounds and cultures, including ex-felons and ex-addicts, who view the work as an important opportunity to grow as individuals. A Tale of Two Kitchens explores the ways in which a restaurant can serve as a place of both dignity and community.

Walk The Line

More than 37,000 Chinese citizens entered the US illegally via its southern border in 2023, hoping to find a better life in America. Many more are following in their footsteps, often with young children in tow. To reach the Land of the Free, they embark on a most treacherous journey: the migrants first need to reach Ecuador, the country closest to the US that would grant Chinese passport holders visa-free entry. From there, they need to cross Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, all illegally, to reach California. In this documentary series, CNA correspondent Wei Du travels the route with the Chinese migrants, and try to understand why they've been driven to such desperation, and if the American Dream is all it's made out to be.

Así Pasó

Lecciones para Zafirah

A metaphor of the Flood in our times, The Flood is the rain of violence that washes over us. Noah´s Ark is the train that runs through Mexico toward the United States and migrants are the species attempting to save their lives. For the directors, cinema moves people not just by condemnation, but by confronting and fostering emotions which lead to new, constructive ideas. This documentary became a cinematographic diary for their first viewer, their three-year-old daughter, Zafirah.

Oaxacalifornia: El Regreso

The Mejia family emigrated from Oaxaca to Fresno, California 40 years ago. Filmmaker Trisha ZIff filmed the family in 1996, and returns now to see the changes that have settled over them, and follows the family on their return to Mexico.

Marokkos verlorene Kinder

Imad, Nourdine, Walid and Hamza are a group of young Moroccan boys living in a cave under the lighthouse in the Spanish exclave Melilla. They wait for their chance to cross the sea, spending their time with drugs, video calls with their mothers, and filming themselves for YouTube while breaking into the harbor.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Following the dealings of Mauritanian fixers ferrying migrants by sea, this film shows the human cost of irregular migration in West Africa. Interrogating the role of fixers as facilitators of the voyage across the sea as well as the casualties that occur, this asks if they are very different from 16th century slave catchers.