Migration and Culture

In Israel’s occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans work ille­gal­ly as con­struc­tion labour­ers. At night they sleep on the hill­crests in impro­vised huts and sleep­ing cubi­cles, a stark con­trast to the … read more

The doc­u­men­tary FROM FAR AWAY shows film­mak­er Thomas Arslan’s jour­ney back to the coun­try of his origin after twenty years: Arslan and his small team set out in the coun­try’s … read more

They are called “nobod­ies”, Span­ish “nadie”: migrants that cross Mexico on their way to the United States. They travel with­out papers in order to avoid being sent back when stopped … read more

East London Muslim girl Sha­ha­nara is chang­ing from pink hot­pants into a saree, to meet her hus­band at the air­port. She has only met him once before, when she was … read more

A family tale – ordi­nary, crazy and excep­tion­al at the same time. A film about exile and home, about par­ents, grand­par­ents, sib­lings and all the other close and dis­tant rela­tions … read more

In Jan­u­ary of 2004, in the north­ern Moroc­can city of Tang­iers, first time doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Saeed Taji Farouky met a 26 year-old Moroc­can named Abdelfat­tah. He was a clan­des­tine, one … read more

Michale Boganim’s lyri­cal doc­u­men­tary picks up on the theme of van­ish­ing Jewish cul­ture. The three part film depics a jour­ney from the Ukraine to ‘Little Odessa’ in Brook­lyn New York … read more

José Anto­nio Gutier­rez was one of the 300,000 sol­diers the U.S. mil­i­tary sent to war in Iraq in March 2003. A few hours after the war began, his pic­ture was broad­cast all over the world: he was the first Amer­i­can sol­dier to be killed in this war. He was a so-called green­card sol­dier – one of approx­i­mate­ly 32.000 non-U.S. cit­i­zens fight­ing in the ranks of the U.S. mil­i­tary. The film tells the moving and nearly unbe­liev­able story of a one-time street kid from Guatemala, who headed north along the Pan-Amer­i­can High­way – full of hopes and desires for a better future – ulti­mate­ly to die as Amer­i­can hero far from home. Search­ing for the images and sto­ries that made up this life, we set out to retrace José Antonio’s path – from Guatemala through Mexico to the United States. This story is told by the people who accom­pa­nied José Anto­nio on his path: his friends from the street, the social work­ers at the orphan­age, his sister, his foster family, his com­rades at the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendle­ton. But the nar­ra­tors of the film are also the people we encoun­tered as we were repeat­ing José Antonio’s odyssey from the world of the poor to the world of the rich. People who day after day join the end­less stream of emi­grants – with no iden­ti­ty, no papers – equipped with noth­ing but their abil­i­ty to work hard and their will­ing­ness to turn their backs on their home and family for­ev­er. José Antonio’s story is no adventurer’s tale. It is the story of an attempt to sur­vive – on both sides of the world.