Film Day Refugee Week Berlin 2024

The programme, curated by Other Cinemas, consists of 5 shorts and 1 feature length film that explore the theme of ‘Our Home’. Home can be more than one place and finding it can be a journey, as it is for so many of us who have to leave our countries and rebuild our lives. Sometimes we can find home in a single person. Other times it’s in a whole community. And often, it’s in a single gesture of care and welcome. From the places we gather to share meals to our collective home, planet earth, the selected films invite us to celebrate the diverse meanings of our home(s).

A selection of films you are unlikely to watch together anywhere else in one session!

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL FILMS WILL BE SCREENED IN ENGLISH OR IF IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

17:00-17:15 Motherland, dir. Ellen Evans (13m 14s)

Category: Short Documentary
Motherland speaks to the experiences of the Windrush generation and subsequent generations of Jamaicans navigating the landscape of the UK hostile environment.
Audience: Wide age group.
Themes: Windrush, Jamaica, Deportation, Hostile Environment

17:20-17:50 In Vitro, dir. Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind (27m 44s)

Category: Short FictionWith a cast led by Hiam Abbas (star of ‘Succession’ and ‘Ramy’), In Vitro stages a conversation between a mother and daughter, two generations of Palestinians considering what it may mean to rebuild a home one has never seen or has long lost.
Audience: Wide age group.
Themes: Palestine, Sci-Fi, Exile, Memory, Ecological Disaster

18:00-18:05 A Swing in Atayfiyah, dir. Bediah (3m 24s)

Category: Short Documentary
A Swing in Atayfiyah dwells in the memory of homes and friendships left behind in Iraq, the irrecoverable sense of belonging, and the dissonance of diaspora.
Audience: Wide age group.
Themes: Iraq, Migration, Diaspora

18:05-18:30 Little Pyongyang, dir. Roxy Rezvany (24m)

Category: Short Documentary
With exclusive access to one of the world’s largest community of North Korean defectors, this is a tale of one North Korean’s struggle to leave behind the homeland. Joong-wha Choi, a former soldier in the DPRK, lives today with his wife and kids in a sleepy London suburb. Despite enjoying the new-found comforts of his British life, and being emancipated from the pressures of the North Korean state, his dilemma lies in a desire to return to the land that betrayed him, but is undoubtedly his true home.
Audience: Wide age group
Themes: Displacement, belonging.

18:40-19:00 I Carry It With Me Everywhere, dir. Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah (18m 47s)

Category: Short Fiction
I Carry It With Me Everywhere draws a line across multiple temporalities and registers of immigrant life, uniting three different stories of migration in Northwest London through a shared condition of fragmentation.
Audience: Wide age group.
Themes: Migration, Grief, Death, Displacement, Punjab, Syria, Jamaica.

19:30-20:55 Dhalinyaro (Youth), dir. Lula Ismaïl (1h 25m)

Trailer

Category: Feature fiction
Synopsis: Asma, Hibo and Deka are on the verge of high school graduation. As they navigate the beginnings of adulthood, they must decide between university in France or staying home in Djibouti.
Audience: 15+
Themes: Djibouti, France, University, Friendship, Girlhood , Coming of Age.

In collaboration with Mensch Raum Land and Haus der Statistik.

Image: still from Motherland by Ellen Evans.

Host or Publisher Refugee Week