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.

Notes about identity

Gas Station or the Pigeons of Lahore

The parallel stories of four Pakistani immigrants in Greece become the trigger for the director to explore the story of his father, a worker in the Perama Shipyard. The background unfolds a most deadly shipwreck, Libyan immigrants found in limbo, as well as a (possibly racist) crime, which was committed during the shooting of this film.

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.

La Corse, belle et méditerranéenne

Nausicaa

Thuisfront

A family with five children flees the war raging in their home village on the Russian border. They end up in Mshanets, a farming village on the other side of the country, remote and unknown. Here the family starts building a new home. At the same time, two documentary makers come to the village, looking for a story. In the Lymar family they find the ideal characters for their film. But one day, when the renovation of their house is almost finished, the family disappears. The filmmakers go in search of their characters and along the way they try to find an answer to the question: what does a person need to feel at home?

Lettres ouvertes

Between 1931 to 2002, Switzerland issued some six million seasonal residence permits, known as "A" permits, to immigrant workers. This status carried drastic rules, such as a ban on family reunification and a stay in Switzerland limited to nine months a year. In open letters, former seasonal workers and their children recount the impact this system had on their lives.

Trek - Spy on the Wildebeest

Each year over 1.2 million wildebeest travel across the vast Serengeti plains and Kenya's Masai Mara on a 1,800 kilometer circular journey, relentlessly followed by every big African predator. Revolutionary spy cams - airborne, swimming or disguised as rocks, skulls or dung - reveal the Great Wildebeest Migration from entirely new perspectives. This 2-part series focuses on the growing-up of a calf as he takes his first steps, faces his first deadly perils and tries to cross crocodile-infested rivers. It combines natural humor with exciting drama and gripping music.

Planète Méditerranée

The Mediterranean. Because people have been travelling there for thousands of years, it is believed to be without secrets. And yet, far below its surface, lie vast unexplored territories, luxurious gardens worthy of the finest tropical coral reefs. These natural wonders are inaccessible to the traditional diver, in a twilight zone, between 60 and 120 m, where there’s less than 1% of sunlight. If diving at such depths is always a challenge, staying there is a fantasy, a utopia that becomes reality in Planet Mediterranean. In the tradition of Commander Cousteau and his "houses under the sea," the team of diver-photographer Laurent Ballesta is undertaking a new world-record setting mission in complete freedom and without time limit.

Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe, Lesvos, Aegean Sea: 28 October 2015

On 28 October 2015, a migrant boat left the coast of Western Turkey heading to the closest European coast – the Greek island of Lesvos. The shipwreck resulted in the death of at least 43 people, making it the deadliest incident of that period, also known as “the long summer of migration.” One of the survivors, the artist Amel Alzakout, recorded the journey and the shipwreck on a waterproof camera attached to her wrist. This footage – which also forms the basis of her subsequent film Purple Sea – provides a unique situated perspective on this tragic event at the threshold of Europe.

Чермет

Ilya learned street-smarts in the harsh realities of Russia's Far North, book-smarts in literature class, and the strength of the fist from a father who strived to raise a son following the straight and narrow. His days consist of berating a subordinate and lamenting the days of Stalin; his nights-of scraping metal and composing obscenity-riddled poems. Ilya longs for a life more becoming of his stature, but unbridled personal demons present a major obstacle to his dreams of conquering the nation's capital.

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.

El sueño europeo: Serbia

“The European Dream: Serbia” is an investigative documentary by journalist Jaime Alekos about the tortures of Hungarian police to the refugees and migrants they catch trying to cross their border and the harsh living conditions in which they survive in Serbia awaiting an opportunity to enter the EU.

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.

Route 4

Le Mystère des anneaux du Cap Corse

Explore the mysterious giant rings of the Mediterranean, buried at a depth of 120m, with the world-famous Laurent Ballesta, world-renowned diver and his team, to understand the origin of these unique and unknown formations.

Miraggio

Mali - Algeria - Libya - Italy. Issa’s escape from West Africa to the European mainland lasted ten years. Everything was supposed to be better here. But when he arrived in Rome, the only thing waiting for the young man was a life of homelessness and unemployment – which meant no money to send home. Drissa and Sekou share a similar fate, waiting in Italian asylum centres for a residence permit. Then there’s Bubu, who, forced to move from job to job, is unable to settle down. And lastly comes Alassane, who lives without identity papers in a state of constant uncertainty in a refugee camp near Rome. They all have one thing in common: after a gruelling odyssey, none of them has found the Italy they were hoping for when they arrived. Disillusioned, they find themselves in a vacuum of waiting, reflecting on the time they live in and the time that lies ahead.

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.

Në mes

In rural Kosovo, identical houses are built for family members working abroad, in the hope that they will one day return to settle in their old homeland.