Ali Salem, architect of resistance(2008)

Aufenthaltserlaubnis(de)

It follows Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta as he celebrates the end of the autocrats. Cheerful farewell rituals accompany others facing political persecution on their way to fly home.

Occupation, the 27th Picture(hr)

We encounter the controversial Croatian film director Lordan Zafranovic in voluntary exile in Prague. The film follows his rise from a talented outsider to the celebrated Yugoslav director of the acclaimed war film, 'An Occupation in 26 Pictures'. His life story is an unconventional depiction of a rise and fall that reveals compromises made in order to survive artistically during communism, as well as the missed opportunities and miscalculations that led to his inability to adapt in later years. Is the charismatic Zafranovic a national traitor or a victim of historical circumstances in which the only thing he wanted to do, in his own words, was to be himself and make films?

Galoot(en)

A film essay by Asher de Bentolila Tlalim, an Israeli filmmaker living in London, GALOOT ("Exile" in Hebrew) is an extended meditation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of those living at a distance. Through international visits (London, Israel, Morocco and Poland) and dialogue-with Palestinian refugees, the new immigrants to Israel who now occupy their homes, the current occupants of his family's former house in Tangiers, the residents of the former village of his wife's family in Lisensk, a scientist, a jazz musician, and others-the filmmaker explores the position of exile, with its unique pain and perspective on what others may be too close to perceive.

Cheikh El Hasnaoui, from the White House to the Blue Ocean(fr)

Cheikh El-Hasnaoui is an Algerian singer who left his country in 1937 without ever setting foot there again. Between 1939 and 1968 he composed most of his repertoire in France. For many years the Algerian cafes of Paris were the stages of his shows. With a handful of artists of his generation, he laid the foundations of modern Algerian song. A fervent defender of women's rights, he claims, as a pioneer, the fight for identity for a plural Algeria. At the end of the Sixties, he ended his artistic career. On July 6, 2002 he died in Saint-Pierre de la Réunion, where he is buried to this day. This 80-minute documentary follows in the footsteps of this extraordinary character. From Kabylia to Saint-Pierre de a Réunion via the Casbah of Algiers and the belly of Paris.

何以为家(zh)

Shâd Bâsh(fr)

L'Exode(fr)

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found(fr)

More than 60,000 of Ernest Cole’s 35mm film negatives were inexplicably discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm, Sweden. Most considered these forever lost, especially the thousands of pictures he shot in the U.S. Told through Cole’s own writings, the stories of those closest to him, and the lens of his uncompromising work, the film is a reintroduction of a pivotal Black artist to a new generation and will unravel the mystery of his missing negatives.

De Gaulle, le géant aux pieds d'argile(fr)

Voltige(uk)

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.

The John Akii Bua Story: An African Tragedy(en)

At the Munich Olympics of 1972, John Akii Bua, from the impoverished African country of Uganda, powered round the inside lane in the 400m hurdles, past the English favourite, and reigning Olympic Champion David Hemery, to win the gold medal, 10m clear of the field. John Akii Bua had become the first African to win gold in an event under 800 metres. He was also the first man to break the 48 seconds barrier in the 400 metre hurdles, an event so gruelling its nickname is 'The Mankiller'. This is the story about that amazing triumph - and what happened next. David Hemery retired to respectable fame and fortune, later becoming president of the UK's athletics federation. John Akii Bua returned to a Uganda carving the name of its military "President", Idi Amin, into genocidal notoriety. This is a film about the pinnacle of athletic achievement - and the search to discover what followed.

Sons of the Clouds: The Last Colony(es)

The political upheaval in North Africa is responsibility of the Western powers —especially of the United States and France— due to the exercise of a foreign policy based on practical and economic interests instead of ethical and theoretical principles, essential for their international politic strategies, which have generated a great instability that causes chaos and violence, as occurs in Western Sahara, the last African colony according to the UN, a region on the brink of war.

The Rebel(it)

The adventures of Guido Picelli, a man who was a leading light in the history of twentieth-century Italy and Europe. Guido Picelli fought untiringly for the affirmation of social justice and opposed every form of totalitarianism.

Lost land(fr)

Straddling a 2,400-kilometer-long wall constructed by the Moroccan army, the Western Sahara is today divided into two sections — one occupied by Morocco, the other under the control of the Sahrawi National Liberation Movement’s Polisario Front. Drawing from stories of flight, exile, interminable waiting and the arrested, persecuted lives on both sides of that wall, this film bears witness to the Sahrawi people, their land, their entrapment in other people’s dreams. In an esthetic that sublimates the real, Lost Land resonates like a score that juxtaposes sonorous landscapes, black-and-white portraits and nomadic poetics.

The Wind(ar)

The tragedy of the Syrian people: War, conflict, loss, migration, exile, asylum, detention, drowning… A deserted place. Abandoned people. Abandoned country. The doors slammed shot; the doors are now locked - the keys thrown away...for what seems forever.

Tent City(en)

The story of a group of Cubans who arrived in Miami during the Mariel Boatlift and were housed in an improvised camp in the heart of the city. Everyone lived together —men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, separated only by cloth curtains that hung from ropes suspended between the beds, like floating walls.

Shoot Me(en)

The Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor, daughter of a former advisor of Ahmadinejad's, has been living in exile in Germany for four years. When she hears that the fellow Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi, who is also living in exile in Germany, faces death threats and has to hide because of one of his songs, she doesn't hesitate and has to find him. On her search she encounters fear everywhere. Narges Kalhor has to face her inconvenient memories of suppression, hatred and anger for her past in Iran.

The Exiles(id)

During the 1965 mass killings to eliminate the Indonesian Communist Party, the new regime banned scholars in the Soviet Union and China, forcing them into exile across Europe. This documentary follows those displaced individuals as they navigate the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany, and Indonesia, reflecting on the traumatic events that uprooted their lives.

The Island(es)

Dos Islas is a poetic story about old age, family and the bond between a granddaughter and a grandmother. The woman, who just turned 102, tells stories about her past and childhood. In a literary and visual way she describes the most minute details. The film dazzles the viewer with love and optimism, the time passes slowly between the two islands, which might be real people, real places or the products of the main character’s imagination.

Hamada(es)

Filled with vitality, humor and unexpected situations, Hamada paints an unusual portrait of a group of young friends living in a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere. Western Sahara is known as “the last colony in Africa” and this conflict is the longest and one of the least known ongoing disputes in the continent, but the Sahrawi people refuse to become invisible.