Film Categories: Immigration

  • 敬祖 ·PAYING RESPECTS

    ‘敬祖 ·PAYING RESPECTS’ is a short film using the Chinese ritual of burning joss paper to reflect on questions of death & diaspora. Yiqing explores her grief by offering her ancestors everything they couldn’t afford. Everything she burns gets sent to the afterlife. The film plays with themes of memory, distance and dreams.

  • Never Sleep

    Muna is a timid nonbinary teenager with the ability to communicate with the spirit world through her dreams. Following the sudden death of their father Ibrahim, they chooses to stop sleeping to avoid having to confront his restless spirit. When Muna’s estranged aunt Naja re-enters their life, their collective grief meets the turbulent spirits of their ancestors, and the two family members must decide whether to remain comforted by avoidance or face their fear of emotional vulnerability head on. With Naja’s guidance, Muna manages to forge a path towards rewriting her understanding of memory, loss, legacy and familial responsibility

  • Salma!

    As Hadi is swept into a flood of childhood memories from Lebanon, he steps into the dreamlike whimsical world of Salma Zahore. A creature that encapsulates both the conflicts of his life and his declaration of love to the world. Neither male nor female, neither devout nor an atheist, neither dutiful nor deviant, both sexual yet celibate. Faceless, yet the face of hope for so many around them.

  • My Grandpa Ivan

    A professional soccer player looks back on summers in a small Bulgarian town, recalling the deep bond he shared with his grandfather, who forever shaped his love for the game.

  • The Sky After Rain (Shyla Hope)

    Based on recorded audio interviews with Shyla Hope discussing her inner self journey to understanding and accepting her identity as a lesbian trans woman growing up in Iran.

  • Night and fog in Kurdistan

    Night and Fog in Kurdistan is a documentary by a Kurdish female filmmaker that follows seven Yazidi teenage girls who survived the 2014 ISIS genocide. The film traces their five-year journey from refugee camps in Turkey to resettlement in Europe, showing the effects of genocide, displacement, and the challenges of migration. Using illustration, self-storytelling, and first-person perspectives, the film lets the girls share their own experiences of survival and adaptation.

  • To Make Ends Meat 心頭肉

    As a Chinese-style sausage factory in Vancouver’s Chinatown closes down, the legacy and community it has fostered for over a century is celebrated and remembered through the eyes of one of its workers. Embracing subjectivity, intergenerational relationships and cultural revitalization, To Make Ends Meat 心頭肉 is a call to commemorate the old, in a city fixated with newness.