What is the path of a Jerusalemite student going from his home in East Jerusalem to the University campus in Abu Dis? Ever since the construction of the separation barrier and the addition of checkpoints in the Jerusalem area, a short ten minute walk to the university has become a long and wearisome journey of over an hour. The movie accompanies one student and shows how the wall and the checkpoints have become an inseparable part of his daily life. The film is a part of “Jerusalem Moments” - Film Project by Ir Amim.
Every day, thousands of miles from here, dozens of people are driven by an incredible sense of hope to set out with the intention of arriving in Europe. During the first few days of their crossing from Agadez to Djanet, from Niger into Algeria, these emigrants are forced to confront the time of the desert with its stases, its brutal accelerations and its mineral inertia. The ordeal they undergo turns them into undocumented immigrants. But during their journey, this film considers them as individuals and for a brief moment steals them from the invisibility that awaits them.
Prizes:
2009, Prix Jean Vigo at Punta de Vista, Spain
2009, Best medium length documentary at Doclisboa, Portugal
2009, First Prize of the Jury, Human Rights Film Festival of Buenos Aires, Argentine
2009, Documentary Film Prize, Regards sur le cinéma du monde at Rouen, France
2009, First Prize at FID, Marseille, France
An ordinary Saturday in the South of California. Adam, a lower middle class North-American man, sees off his wife and children to carry out his weekly task. The job implies sacrifices, but he accomplishes it with the solid conviction of his ideals.
Together with his colleagues that share similar beliefs, Adam volunteers to guard the American border. He protects his country against the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico. This Saturday, however, will end up in an unexpected way.
Brześć – the border between Poland and the former Soviet Union. Here the European railway tracks end; from now the tracks are wider. Trains in Europe move along 1435 mm wide tracks, while in the former Soviet Union the tracks are 1524 mm wide. There’s an 89 mm difference. To allow numerous international trains pass through, Belarusian workers have to exchange several thousands of train wheels a day. In this short, black and white documentary, filmed in an excellent way, Marcel Łoziński subtly shows that those millimetres delimit a border between two different worlds.
Prizes:
1993, Grand Prix at International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen
1993, Special Juliusz Burski Award at Lubuskie Summer Film Festival
1994, Golden Pigeon at International Film Festival Lipsk
1994, Special Jury Award at International Short Film Festival Clermont-Ferrand
1994, Oscar, Academy Awards, nominated in the „Best Documentary Short Subject” category
1994, Grand Prix at International Film Festival Montreal
1993, II Prize at Baltic Film and Television Festival Gudhjem
1993, Special Jean d'Arcy Award at International Film Festival "Vue sur le Docs" Marseille
1993, I Prize at International Short Film Festival Villa do Conde
1993, Felix, European Film Awards, nominated in the „Best documentary” category
1994, Special Distinction at International Festival San Francisco
1995, Award for the best documentary at Flickerfest International Short Film Festival Sydney
The American version of the Australian TV series, “Border Security”. As the original series, this one also presents the daily work of the people responsible for protecting the US borders. We can watch real-life situations that they have to deal with, as well as their methods of work and the most modern technologies that they have at their disposal. Each day thousands of people reach USA. Some of them are trying to commit crimes. They hold invalid visas and fake passports, they smuggle drugs, exotic animals and arms or they are trying to escape the justice pretending to be somebody else. How to find them in the travelling crowd?
On a hot summer day Marziano, an Israeli chicken breeder, accompanied by his Romanian worker drives his chickens to market. They are brought to a halt at a Palestinian roadblock. In his attempts to get through, Marziano is forced to confront Nabil, the police commander in charge, who used to work in his chicken-coop before. In the burning heat of a merciless sun, it ends in a 'cockfight'. There begins a clash of two men, two human natures, all this in the context of a political conflict.
Prizes:
2000, First Prize at Montpellier Film Festival,
2000, Special Presentation, New Directors / New Films, New York, USA.
2000, Silver Plaque Award, Chicago International Film Festival, USA,
2001, Certificate of Merit, San Francisco Film Festival,
2000, Special Script Mention, Munich International Festival of Film School, Germany, .
2000, Special Mention, Jerusalem Film Festival, Israel
2000, Audience Award, Eksperimento Film and Video Festival, Manila
2001, Press award, Bratislava Film Festival
2001, Best Student Production Award, Melbourne International Film Festival, Australia
The film is about people living in Brussels that use food as a way of preserving their connections with the homeland and as a way to communicate with people coming from other cultures. They all tell stories that are, in some way, related to food and their homelands, and they share with us their philosophy regarding food and cuisine. The director’s intention was to make a film that would show the importance of food for one culture’s existence, as well as its power to bring different people closer to each other. The people who talk about food and their cultures in the film come from Bulgaria, Brazil, Lebanon and Turkey.
It is a story of a young Vietnamese girl, Mai Anh, who manages to cross illegally the Polish border. She has to reach Warsaw where her fiancé is waiting for her, a better life awaits her and where her dreams will come true. The girl escapes her brutal carriers and tries to get to the capital on her own, with no money in her pocket and without knowing the language. Mai Anh’s travel across Poland is a journey of humiliation and violence.
Prizes:
2009, Special Jury Award for Katarzyna Klimkiewicz at Gdynia Polish Film Festival (in the Young Polish Cinema Competition) for "having positioned the Polish cinema within widely defined emancipation processes"
2009, Honorary Distinction for Thu Ha Mai (in the Young Polish Cinema Competition) at Gdynia Polish Film Festival
The movie depicts the journey of three young Palestinian brothers who go alone each day from their home in the outskirts of Jerusalem to the Jewish neighbourhoods of the city in order to support their family by selling chewing gums at busy intersections. In their family, the children have taken the place of the adults, who find it difficult to make a living following the construction of the separation wall. The film is a part of “Jerusalem Moments” - Film Project by Ir Amim.
The show follows the work of the officers of various government agencies that watch for the safety and order at the Australian border. The officers, using the most modern equipment, have to find clever and well-organised criminals among thousands of people that cross the border each day.
The dynamic series shows the work of the people that protect Australia’s borders: bombers, custom officers, anti-terrorist forces, as well as immigration and quarantine officers. The series is very popular in Australia. 4 seasons (altogether 84 episodes) have been produced so far.
Luis is 27, and lives in the remote peasant village of Sierra de Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. Here, families are numerous and the land is scarce and arid. Like most of the local people, Luis' parents are Mixtecos Indians who survive by growing corn and selling jelly at the weekly local market. But Luis has a dream of how he will escape the surrounding poverty and be able to look after his parents in their old age. Inspired by classic movies of Mexican boxing heroes, he's training to become a famous boxing champion in the United States. This film follows him as he travels north to the U.S. border, joining other migrants determined to outwit the US frontier guards and scale the wall to the New World to realize their dreams.
The film is about a building that was originally built as an envelope factory. Now it is a refugee centre - a warehouse for humans. Morgan Devereaux – the hero and, at the same time, the narrator of the film - is dancing on the roof of the former paper factory turned into refugees’ home. The building is located 500 km down from the Arctic Circle. Morgan has been there for a week, or for months, he doesn't know. He merely exists, as one of his co-inmates puts it: "I just exist, that's the only word I can use. I'm not dead, I just exist." The refugees are filmed while cooking, watching TV, breakdancing in the recreation room, their children playing in the playroom. Two of the inmates are being interviewed. But most of the time Morgan's narration accompanies the images, sometimes altered by time-laps or slow motion effects. „Time has a new meaning here.“
Prizes:
2008, Special Prize at Tampere International Short Film Festival
Each night the only border crossing between India and Pakistan on a 3000km stretch becomes the sight of an extraordinary event. Thousands of people gather to witness the ritual closing of the border, after which the masses get as close as possible to the gate to greet their former neighbours. This “festival“ is therefore on the one hand a celebration of the partition, but on the other hand also the only connecting element.
What do the terms separation, home and proximity mean to the people on both sides?
Prizes:
2009, Audience & Jury Award at the 25th International Short Film Festival Hamburg,
2009, Berlin Today Award
2009, Grand Jury Prize at Bilbao,
2009, Golden Award at Damascus Film Festival
2009, Special Jury Mention at Krakow International Film Festival,
2009, Special Jury Mention at Festival International de Cine de Huesca,
2009, Best Documentary Award at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival,
2009, Black Pearl Award at MEIFF,
2009, Special Jury Prize & Audience Award at 28th Uppsala International Short Film Festival,
2009, Audience Award at Münster Film Festival,
2010, Murnau Shortfilm Award, Germany
2010, Audience Award at the 40th Tampere International Film Festival
2010, Award as „Best Documentary“ at the Heart of Gold International Film Festival in Australia
2010, National Geographic Award at Flickerfest in Sydney
Fourteen-year old Jemoh fled from Liberia when she was 11, and has been living in a refugee camp in Sierra Leone for the last three years. Now she is about to join one of the first and biggest UNHCR convoys to return to Liberia for three years. This film follows Jemoh's long journey home and shows the mixed picture she finds when she gets there. Jemoh's just one of the millions of children caught up in the world's conflicts. Some are forced to fight and kill; others are used as slaves and "wives". Those that survive are left brutalized and traumatized. How, this documentary asks, do you rehabilitate children who have gone through these kinds of experiences?