Between Lands

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

April 2005 •German

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

David – Stories of Honour and Shame

November 1997 •Finnish

Documentary about Finnish Jews during WWII and their unique position as German allies.

“May Your Memory Be Love“ - The Story of Ovadia Baruch

December 2008 •English

In March 1943, twenty-year-old Ovadia Baruch was deported together with his family from Greece to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, his extended family was sent to the gas chambers. Ovadia struggled to survive until his liberation from the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945. While in Auschwitz, Ovadia met Aliza Tzarfati, a young Jewish woman from his hometown, and the two developed a loving relationship despite inhuman conditions. This film depicts their remarkable, touching story of love and survival in Auschwitz, a miraculous meeting after the Holocaust and the home they built together in Israel. This film is part of the "Witnesses and Education" project, a joint production of the International School for Holocaust Studies and the Multimedia Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In this series, survivors recount their life stores - before, during and after the Holocaust. Each title is filmed on location, where the events originally transpired.

CORRECTIV Unveils: Right-wing Extremist Secret Plan Against Germany

January 2024 •German

On January 10th, the investigative editorial team of CORRECTIV published research into a secret meeting of right-wing extremists, which no one was supposed to know about and which led to demonstrations and protests all over Germany. AfD politicians, CDU politicians, members of the WerteUnion, neo-Nazis and financially strong entrepreneurs came together in November 2023 in a hotel near Potsdam near the Villa on Wannsee, where the “final solution to the Jewish question” was once decided. They met to debate to expel millions of people from Germany, including non-German citizens with a migration background, as well as German citizens with a migration background and German citizens without a migration background who do not want to adapt to the ideological worldviews of those present. On January 17, 2024, the research premiered in the Berliner Ensemble as a staged reading with a political satirical character.

Special Flight

August 2011 •French

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.

The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files

June 2019 •English

David Olusoga opens secret government files to show how the Windrush scandal and the ‘hostile environment’ for black British immigrants has been 70 years in the making.

Deportation Class

June 2017 •German

Documentary about a "transportation commando" in Germany with the goal to deport 200 people to Albania...

Hélène Berr, une jeune fille dans Paris occupé

December 2013 •French

Death of the Serpent God

August 2014 •English

This film begins, so to speak, where ‘Vol spécial’ left off. The reality of migration bears its teeth: Following a scuffle, 20-year-old Koumba from France is sent back to the place where she was raised – Senegal. She returns to the lost village of her ancestors hysterical, argumentative and unproductively rebellious. Now the mother of a toddler, she continues to come to terms with the two cultures; the outcome is unforeseeable, as is the outcome of this cinematic long-term observation. The risk of its failure due to its protagonist is palpable. But Koumba’s fascinating metamorphosis is also obvious, her body and character have taken on a more harmonious nature. All hope is not lost.

The Deported

April 2019 •English

The Deported follows four long term residents of the United States, each with an Order of Deportation over their head, and their families as they have to make critical decisions that will either keep their family together and separate them. Their choices are: 1. to self-deport. 2. To take sanctuary in a church. 3. To fight back legally. 4. To fall into denial and do nothing.

Aquí estamos

March 2021 •Spanish

Island Memories

September 1978 •English

In 1755, ten thousand French Canadian settlers were thrown off their land, loaded on ships, and exiled. Island Memories explores the past in a small Acadian community in Nova Scotia where the last survivor of this great deportation is reputedly buried. A lively film full of adventure, people, and history.

The Children of Leningradsky

August 2005 •Polish

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain an estimated four million children have found themselves living on the streets in the former countries of the Soviet Union. In the streets of Moscow alone there are over 30,000 surviving in this manner at the present time. The makers of the documentary film concentrated on a community of homeless children living hand to mouth in the Moscow train station Leningradsky. Eight-year-old Sasha, eleven-year-old Kristina, thirteen-year-old Misha and ten-year-old Andrej all dream of living in a communal home. They spend winter nights trying to stay warm by huddling together on hot water pipes and most of their days are spent begging. Andrej has found himself here because of disagreements with his family. Kristina was driven into this way of life by the hatred of her stepmother and twelve-year-old Roma by the regular beatings he received from his constantly drunk father. "When it is worst, we try to make money for food by prostitution," admits ...

Separated

October 2024 •English

Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Errol Morris confronts one of the darkest chapters in recent American history: family separations. Based on NBC News Political and National Correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Morris merges bombshell interviews with government officials and artful narrative vignettes tracing one migrant family’s plight. Together they show that the cruelty at the heart of this policy was its very purpose. Against this backdrop, audiences can begin to absorb the U.S. government’s role in developing and implementing policies that have kept over 1300 children without confirmed reunifications years later, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The Acadian Connection

September 1995 •French

National Film Board of Canada documentary of stories of Acadians (French Canadians from the eastern Maritime provinces). Hundreds of thousands of Acadians emigrated to Louisiana following deportation by the British during the Acadian Expulsion of the mid-18th century, hence the term 'Cajun.'

Evangeline's Quest

September 1996 •English

Explores the creation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie,” and the phenomenon it became.

Me Mataron 3 Veces

August 2023 •Spanish

After their mother's femicide, three siblings are separated and forced to live in different places. Years later they gather to raise their voices and fight to be made visible in a country where orphans for femicide are ignored by the state and invisible to society. It's up to them to tell their story.

Modus Operandi

March 2008 •Dutch

Between 1942 and 1944 some 24,916 Jews were deported from Belgium to Auschwitz. The roundups and deportations were organized and carried out by the Nazis with the - not always conscious - cooperation of Belgian authorities. The attitude of the authorities here varied from outright resistance to voluntary or unwitting collaboration.

(be)longing

January 2007 •English

A group of inspiring African teenagers brought illegally or trafficked into the UK overcome desperate situations and build new lives for themselves in London. The girls face deportation on their 18th birthdays under current Home Office rules. This film asks them what they long for and where they feel they belong.

1944. Deportation

May 2019 •Ukrainian

In 1944 Crimean Tatars has suffered a long road in exile. It was accompanied by famine, illness and loss. In the first years of exile, almost half of deported Crimean Tatars died. But those, who survived, dreamed of only one thing - to return to Crimea. The documentary 1944 tells about the tragedy of all Crimean Tatars through several separate life stories. They are cherished by each Crimean Tatar family and must be remembered by all generations to come.