La Vie sans Brahim

Perdus entre deux rives, les Chibanis oubliés

Once Upon a Time

Every year, a Kurdish family leaves Gaziantep (Anatolia) to work on the land near Ankara. This thankless life of seasonal labor turns upside down when the eldest son falls in love.

Les messagers

From the Sahara to Mellila, witnesses talk about how they narrowly escaped death, unlike their companions - all migrants who were literally and symbolically swallowed up by the frontier.

A Thousand Pines

In this tale of labor and family that shines a light on the precarity of temporary work visas, Raymundo Morales leads a crew of workers who have to make the challenging decision to leave their families in rural Mexico to plant commercial pine forests in the United States.

The Charcoal People

This deeply human documentary examines the subject of environmental destruction, highlighting the impoverished migrant workers who are chopping down the Amazon rainforest to create charcoal for pig iron production used primarily in the automobile industry. The film examines the children and elders and their daily lives and work as they burn timber in igloo-looking huts, their bodies charred gray for $2 a day, struggling to survive.

Bitter Sweet Ballad

This is a story about youth with music. It all happens at the Dandelion School, Beijing’s first middle school specifically established for the children of migrant workers. Every year when new pupils arrive, Ms. Yuan Xiaoyan, who has worked in the school choir for eight years, would choose a group of music-loving first-years with solid musical foundations to join the choir. A new group of children join the choir while those who have advanced to the second year have to discuss with their families their future choices. For choir members, their music career in middle school will eventually stop due to the pressure of high school entrance examinations and the inevitable parting. But along this journey accompanied by music, they have been savoring the joys and sorrows of their youth, burying them deep in their hearts, and transforming them into growth-promoting nutrients.

Beyond Ratings

Three women share their experience of navigating the app-world in the metro city. The sharings reveal gendered battles as platform workers and the tiresome reality of gig-workers' identities against the absent bosses, masked behind their apps. Filmed in the streets of New Delhi, the protagonists share about their door-to-door gigs, the surveillance at their workplaces and the absence of accountability in the urban landscape.

I Am Golden Karen

I AM GOLDEN KAREN is a coming-of-age story of Thaawa, a Karen refugee in search of his identity as a migrant in Thailand. In between puberty and adulthood, he nurtures a strong desire to return to his motherland, Karen State, Burma.

See You, Lovable Strangers

Follows Vietnamese migrant workers, to examine the reasons behind their numerous escapes and to trace the family situations of those who were deported from Taiwan.

Money for Bread

Women from Turkey and Mecklenburg are working together side-by-side at a fish-processing factory in Lübeck. As they work, they share stories about their lives, including their sorrows, griefs, hopes, and dreams, while expressing their longing for home and feelings of being lost in a foreign place.

Youth (Spring)

This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children's clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.

El Contrato

This documentary from Min Sook Lee follows a poverty-stricken father from Central Mexico, along with several of his countrymen, as they make their annual migration to southern Ontario to pick tomatoes. For 8 months a year, the town's population absorbs 4,000 migrant workers who toil under conditions, and for wages, that no local would accept. Yet despite a fear of repercussions, the workers voice their desire for dignity and respect.

Farewell Ferris Wheel

Farewell Ferris Wheel explores how the U.S. Carnival industry fights to keep itself alive by legally employing Mexican migrant workers with the controversial H-2B guestworker visa.

A Tomato Tragedy

In southern Italy, stateless migrants pick the tomatoes the rest of the world will taste. But what about these workers’ European dreams? Will they be ground to a pulp? Our canned tomatoes are picked by migrant workers who have come to southern Italy to realise their dream of Europe. However, they never get beyond the tomato fields. This documentary shows how the tomato broaches a broader issue. Will the pickers keep believing in their dream, or fight against a Europe where others reap the sweet rewards of their disillusion?

Brothers of the Night

Soft boys by day, kings by night. The film follows a group of young Bulgarian Roma who come to Vienna looking for freedom and a quick buck. They sell their bodies as if that's all they had. What comforts them, so far from home, is the feeling of being together. But the nights are long and unpredictable.