Immigration Story: A Video Mosaic

A short film documenting the immigrant experience. Open-borders? Policing? Naturalizing? Etc.

Giap's Last Day At The Ironing Board Factory

In 1975, a seven-months pregnant Vietnamese refugee, Giap, escapes Saigon in a boat and, within weeks, finds herself working on an assembly line in Seymour, Indiana. 35 years later, her aspiring filmmaker son, Tony, decides to document her final day of work at the last ironing board factory in America.

Dim Sum (A Little Bit of Heart)

Documentarist Jane Wong films her mother and two Chinese friends as they discuss their lives and experiences as émigrés living in Liverpool.

Asyl

House Orders

In buildings where foreign workers lived in Germany, there were strict rules of conduct, defined by the house rules and supervised by the building superintendents. Many rights regarding the freedom of movement, communication and behavior were abused. Interviews with the tenants and with the "orderlies" which point out absurd situations and clashes caused by these restrictions.

Madeleine

Every week, two friends born 67 years apart share their life stories in a senior home's living room. The younger friend convinces the 107-year-old lady to join her in an adventure: a road trip to the sea.

Batchan

Teachings of an Issei. Advice, spirituality and challenges.

USA V SCOTT

When an Arizona resident is charged with three felony counts and faces a 20-year prison sentence for helping migrants, his community grapples with moral questions posed by his arrest.

Yoko Bono - The Art of Being Swedish-Finnish

Because of the poor employment situation in Finland, many families and single people decided to move to Sweden to seek employment in the 1960s and 70s. The move was considered temporary and it affected people’s ways of making themselves at home in the new country; they did not even try to adapt or learn the language of the country. At that time, the nicknames “Finnjävel” and “Hurri” were well-known to Swedish-Finnish youngsters: In Sweden, they were regarded as Finns; and the other way around. As neither nation’s citizens approved them as their own, the Sweden Finns had to create their own identity. But what kind of lives do these immigrants’ children and grandchildren live today? Jonas Karén was born in a Finnish family in Husby’s suburb 1980.

The Lebanese Burger Mafia

The heir to a Burger Baron franchise, the filmmaker chases clues through rural Alberta, capturing the trials and tribulations of Arab immigrants while uncovering the saga of a rogue fast-food chain with mysterious origins and a cult following.

Of Another Place

On a Summer afternoon, Pedro packs the last few boxes before having to leave his apartment in New York. 12 years ago, Pedro and Ana had arrived in America from Portugal, in search of a dream. Now, Ana's voice describes, from the other side of the ocean, that same country to which they are returning. As the rooms are emptied, Pedro bids farewell to one life, welcoming another. But the dream that brought him will remain forever in the city that never sleeps, awaiting his return.

El Vacío

In a mesmerizing confessional built from home video and animation, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio explores the mental prisons and personal trauma created by immigration policy.

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.

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.

God Grew Tired of Us

Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.

Football And Immigration, 100 Years Of Common History

Football is both the place, the crystallization of sporting passion and the witness of identity imaginations. It is also an interesting and relevant area for discussing the migration issue. From the 1930s to the present day, football, notably with the composition of the French team, has reflected the plurality of the French population. Raymond Kopa, Michel Platini, Zinedine Zidane, Basile Boli... these four footballers alone illustrate the four major waves of immigration that France has experienced.