Alex Rivera provides a poignant commentary on labor, ecology, racial capitalism, and imperial infrastructure in his futuristic, science fiction film Sleep Dealer. The film is set in a dystopian future of North America where Mexican water rights are in the control of multinational corporations and the border between the United States and Mexico is completely …
Directed and produced by Jumana Manna, Foragers incorporates documentary, fiction, and archival footage to display the impact of Zionist migration to, and occupation of, Palestine. The film centers around Palestinians who risk heavy fines and imprisonment for violating Israeli foraging restrictions, and connects these stories to broader themes of alienation, community, and political economy. Both …
A gently emotional story about a group of asylum seekers awaiting for their results on a fictional remote Scottish island. Among them is Omar, a young Syrian musician burdened by the weight of his grandfather’s oud, which he has carried all the way from his homeland. By Director Ben Shamrock, it received many accolades, including …
Directed by Guido Hendrikx, Stranger in Paradise is a mixture of fiction and documentary that depicts an actor in a classroom of a detention center telling refugees about what Europeans think of them. It reflects on the powerful relation between the Europeans and refugees in a candid manner and highlights the emotion most people feel …
MINARI by Lee Isaac Chung, USA 2020: A Korean American family moves to an Arkansas farm in search of its own American dream. Amidst the challenges of this new life in the strange and rugged Ozarks, they discover the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home. (Taken from Youtube)
By Sumita Chakravarty Lotte’s mother: How did you know it was me? Nejat Aksu: You are the saddest person here. In his film, The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite, 2008), Turkish-German filmmaker, Fatih Akin foregrounds pain, loss, and the pathos of brief encounters through three intertwined narratives that touch each other, one might …
MEDITERRANEA by Jonas Carpignano, USA 2015: Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in …
“Entre Nos is a bio/true story about a woman’s struggle to survive in New York City with her two children after being abandoned by her husband. The main character, Mariana, totes her two children from the country and culture of Colombia to reunite with her husband in Queens, New York. Her life is devastatingly turned …
“”In America” is not literally autobiographical (the real Frankie was Sheridan’s brother, who died at 10), but it is intensely personal. It’s not the typical story of turn-of-the-century immigrants facing prejudice and struggle, but a modern story, set in the 1980s and involving new sets of problems, such as racism and the drug addiction in …
Forest fires burn in Sumatra; a smoke covers Kuala Lumpur. Grifters beat an immigrant day laborer and leave him on the streets. Rawang, a young man, finds him, carries him home, cares for him, and sleeps next to him. In a loft above lives a waitress. She sometimes provides care and attention. More violence seems …
Language of Belonging is a multi-platform education resource based on the ground breaking Indigenous animation Wadu Matyidi. Designed specifically for Primary-aged students, this diverse learning program explores Adnyamathanha language, culture, stories and traditions, encouraging students to develop their own portfolio and cultural understanding. This is an interactive game, based on the Wadu Matyidi animation, exploring the language and …
LIST OF FILMS ON MIGRATION The Undocumented In the middle Farmingville I learn America The State of Arizona Your day is my Night Eternity and a day The Cloud Capped Star The Golden Thread The Name of a River Toni Dogville Ali: Fear eats the soul Black Girl Lilya 4-ever I don’t want to sleep …
Immigration is one of the more complicated issues facing Americans these days and sadly we don’t see or hear about it very often. Below is a list of 10 great films that explore immigration. Some are more serious documentaries while others are narratives that incorporate some of the more human and historic issues of immigration. …
Lilja 4-ever (2002)Lilja 4-ever is a 2002 Swedish-Danish drama film directed by Lukas Moodysson. Lilja 4-ever is an unremittingly brutal and realistic story of the downward spiral of Lilja, played by Oksana Akinshina, a girl in the former Soviet Union whose mother abandons her to move to the United States. The story is loosely based …
No Fear, No Die (1990) Working from a script co-authored by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau, No Fear, No Die directly confronts the personal politics of race, capital, and especially masculinity, as they are marked by colonisation and its pathologies. While plot matters little in the work of Denis, the film follows the tragic consequences of …
Black Girl (1966) “Black Girl is a 1966 film by the Senegalese writer and director Ousmane Sembène, starring Mbissine Thérèse Diop. Its original French title is La Noire de…, which means “The black girl of…”, as in “someone’s black girl”. The film centers on a young Senegalese woman who moves from Senegal to France to …
A clinically presented series of stark white, unembellished placards illustrates the sobering statistical data for the overwhelming public sentiment against the abolition of the death penalty as an off-screen narrator (Nagisa Oshima) provides a snide, but impassioned rebuttal to popular opinion by presenting a objective documentary of the austere and impersonal milieu associated with the …
The Silence of Lorna (2008) Sokol and Lorna, two Albanian emigrants in Belgium, dream of leaving their dreary jobs to set up a snack bar. They need money, and a permanent resident status. Claudy is a junkie – he needs money to satisfy his addiction. Andrei, the cigarette smuggler, must hold up for a while …
La promesse is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking. The brothers brought the unerring eye for detail and the compassion for those on society’s lowest rungs developed in their earlier documentary work to this absorbing drama about a teenager (Jérémie Renier) gradually …
The Undocumented (2013) Marcos Hernandez lives and works in Chicago. He came to the United States from Mexico, after a life-threatening border crossing through the Sonora Desert in southern Arizona. Each month, he sends money to his mother in Mexico City to buy medicine for his brother, Gustavo, who needs a kidney transplant. The Undocumented, …
Stranger Than Paradise (1984) Rootless Hungarian immigrant Willie (John Lurie), his pal Eddie (Richard Edson), and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) always manage to make the least of any situation, whether aimlessly traversing the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland, or an anonymous Florida suburb. With its delicate humor and dramatic …
The House of Sand and Fog (2003) Academy Award winners Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) and Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) deliver stunning performances as two strangers whose conflicting pursuits of the American Dream lead to a fight for their hopes at any cost. What begins as a struggle over a rundown bungalow spirals into a clash …
The Godfather Part II (1974) Francis Ford Coppola took some of the deep background from the life of Mafia chief Vito Corleone–the patriarch of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel The Godfather–and built around it a stunning sequel to his Oscar-winning, 1972 hit film. Robert De Niro plays Vito as a young Sicilian immigrant in turn-of-the-century New York …
Fast Food Nation (2006) Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear)-a marketing executive at Mickey’s Fast Food Restaurant chain, home of “The Big One”-has a problem. Contaminated meat is getting into the frozen patties of the company’s best-selling burger. To find out why, he’ll have to take a journey to the dark side of the All-American meal. Leaving …
In Between Days (2007) A quiet specimen of personal storytelling at its most exciting, In Between Days intimately portrays the joys and risks of first love and burgeoning adulthood with bracing and undeniable honesty. Aimie (Jiseon Kim) is a teenager recently transplanted from her native South Korea to a snowbound North American city. Disconnected from her single …
Man Push Cart (2005) Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former rock star in his native Pakistan, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken …
