Like Stone Lions in the Gateway into Night

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

2012-04-20 | fr

Evaporating Borders

Evaporating Borders is a poetically photographed and rendered film on tolerance and search for identity. Told through 5 vignettes portraying the lives of migrants on the island of Cyprus, it passionately weaves themes of displacement and belonging.

2014-03-11 | en

Kerkini: The Bird Sanctuary

2021-01-01 | fr

Broken Dreamland

They were children when they left, dreaming of a life without worry: freedom and wealth. But what awaited them was a nightmare. One of them began to change, leading him to commit a lethal knife attack in Turku, Finland. By following the lives of two of the attacker’s friends, the film delves into the experiences of an entire generation of young Moroccan men who feel like they do not belong anywhere. While their families push them to travel to Europe to find a better life, Europe casts them out.

2022-04-15 | fi

What Is a Good Tax?

Too high, misused, unfair... a large part of the French and Europeans criticize taxes. From tax-rascal to tax revolt, the movement of yellow vests in France has returned to the center of attention the question of consent to tax. How to explain a different resistance to taxes from one country to another without tax pressure being an explanation? Is there a "good" tax? Jean Quatremer takes us on a journey to the tax center across Europe, to meet those who pay it, those who decide it, those who study it... or those who allow to avoid it.

2019-05-08 | fr

Jaddoland

Moving between the playful and the contemplative, explores the meaning of identity and home across three generations of an Iraqi family in Texas.

2018-10-25 | en

My Human Self

The inspiring story of the unemployed man who stood up against the Greek crisis and created a social kitchen for the homeless and refugees.

2017-03-06 | el

Amara

From Colorado, where he has chosen to live, Fouad Mennana begins to trace his late grandfather - Amara Mennana - an Algerian farmer expropriated from his land and deported to the prisons of French Guiana in 1926.

2019-03-15 | fr

Your Day Is My Night

Immigrant residents of a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown share their stories of personal and political upheaval. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of the Chinese in the United States through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical movement pieces. Shot in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of Chinatown, this provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life.

2014-05-10 | zh

Paper Dolls

Paper Dolls follows the lives of transgender migrant workers from the Philippines who work as health care providers for elderly Orthodox Jewish men and perform as drag queens during their spare time. It also delves into the lives of societal outcasts who search for freedom and acceptance.

2006-10-26 | en

Ritos Populares: Umbanda no Brasil

A documentary based on the book Umbanda no Brasil by the scholar Mata e Silva, who is interviewed by the director. The book studies the Brazilian religion known as spiritism, a syncretism of African beliefs and magical rites, Indian beliefs and images, and Catholic symbols.

1977-02-01 | pt

The Agency

A look at the work of a group of reporters and photographers from EFE, a Spanish news agency founded in 1939, which is celebrating its eightieth anniversary. A journey around the world —Mexico, Congo, USA, Libya, France, Spain, China and the Chilean Patagonia— with the purpose of honoring all people who work in the shadows, tirelessly seeking the truth in the era of social networks and fake news.

2020-12-04 | es

Rivers of Fire and Ice

A Wildlife Safari through Africa.

1968-11-27 | en

Lost in the Bewilderness

Lost in the Bewilderness is a feature-length documentary about the filmmaker’s cousin Lucas, kidnapped at age five from his native Greece, and found on the eve of his 16th birthday in the US. This story of international parental abduction, filmed for over twenty years, chronicles Lucas’s journey of growth and self-discovery, and culminates with Lucas becoming a father himself. Lost in the Bewilderness is not only a detective story but also a lyrical meditation on childhood, lost and found, and an exploration of how the themes of ancient Greek myth and tragedy, with the family at their center, are still very much alive in the modern world.

2014-03-15 | en

The 800 Mile Wall

"The 800 Mile Wall" highlights the construction of new border walls along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the effect on migrants trying to cross in the U.S. This powerful 90 minute film is an unflinching look at a failed U.S. border strategy that many believe violates fundamental human rights.

2009-07-20 | en

Berlino

What do Italian guest-workers do when they get home, after a hard day's work on one of the many new building sites in Berlin? They talk, get bored, phone home. They try to survive. Berlino is a moving documentary about displacement.

1999-01-01 | it

Brazillians Like Me

The encounter with a growing, and mostly undocumented, brazilian community allows us to bear witness to its energy, its vivacity, and its diversity. This film attempts to work for a larger acceptance of foreigners in their land of exile.

2008-05-17 | fr

52 Blocks: Show and Prove

As beautiful and sleek as it is deadly, 52 Blocks merits special conservation efforts as the United States' only existing native martial culture, as it is indeed, the jazz of the martial arts world. Across the African diaspora, there are manifestations of African-derived warrior-dances, capoeira in brazil, mani in Cuba, ladja in Martinique, pinge in Haiti- yet the US offshoot has remained esoteric, because it was suppressed throughout slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow and then obscured in the criminal justice system. The history, interviews and training of the martial arts style that created Breakdance and boxing greats like Mike Tyson.

2007-01-01 | en

Shipbuilder

This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.

1985-01-01 | en

Samos - The Faces of our Border

2021-04-29 | en