FOR SAMA is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much. For Sama will be the single most heart-wrenchingly honest film you have ever seen. No amount of acting, elite accolades or story manipulation will ever compare to the genuine truth captured by a woman with a camera in Syria. It is truly an honour and a privilege to see this film. Film Threat
Directed by Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts
SELECTED AWARDS & NOMINATIONS
Heartland International Film Festival, Best Documentary Feature (Winner)
Heartland International Film Festival, Social Impact Award (Winner)
SXSW 2019 Film Festival, Special Jury PrizeSXSW 2019 Film Festival, Audience AwardOfficial Selection Festival De Cannes, Best Documentary
HotDOCS, Special Jury Prize
Sheffield Doc Fest 2019, Audience Award
Sheffield Doc Fest 2019, Special Mention
Galway Film Fleadh, Best Human Rights Feature Award Dinard Film Festival, Hitchcock Heartbeat
AJB DOC Film Festival, Best Film (Winner)European Film Awards, Best European Documentary 2019 (Winner)
Traverse City Film Festival, Grand Prize for Best Film
RESOURCES
Film Inquiry Interview with Filmmakers
SCREENING INFO You can access the film for free via the Channel 4 website: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/for-sama/on-demand/66428-001
Travelling, to feel at home: what are the colours of the world? A simple question and hundreds of kilometers to find an answer with a film camera and a notebook. It’s the trip of the members of Comunità XXIV Luglio, an Italian association that works with disabled people, on the roads of central Italy to make a documentary that tells the phenomenon of the reception of migrants in small villages.
The documentary is born after a workshop about multimedia journalism with the disabled people of the association.The most important topic of the documentary is the point of view that tells the story: through this experience it's possible to know two types of marginality: one is that of disabled people, each of them with their stories and their difficulties in the daily life, and the second is that of migrants who risk their life to reach a better place to stay.
Two marginal worlds that rarely come into contact with each other. The choice of telling small villages has been taken to understand the different realities that are changing the social geography of Italy.In one of these villages, Awal, a refugee from Ghana, who still has difficulty in expressing himself inItalian, tells his stories through art. The work about the documentary started in January 2016 with multimedia journalism lessons for the disabled people of the association “Comunità XXIV Luglio”: lessons of reportage, photography, shooting techniques and meetings with professional reporters.
Four guys were chosen to be respectively journalist, photographer and film maker and in July 2016 the journey began. For a week, this small crew of aspiring reporters, went in search stories about immigration and hospitality, traveling with a small bus and followed by a professional troupe.This experience is told by a sort of meta-documentary. The director has an external point of view like a silent and respectful observer who let the protagonists create an instinctive and gradual narrativediscovering the great actual phenomenon of the migration that is changing mental and physical borders. Francesco Paolucci
Directed by Francesco Paolucci
Produced by Comunità XXIV Luglio Handicappati e non Onlus L'Aquila
AWARDS & NOMINATIONS
SPECIAL MENTION 25TH SLAVONIAN BIENNALE “BORDERS OF VISIBILITY”
OFFICIAL SELECTION 2019 “GLOBAL MIGRATION FILM FESTIVAL”
FIRST NATIONAL PRESS AWARD – TELEVISIV SELECTION “INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM FESTIVAL CRISTIANA MATANO” LAMPEDUSA
SCREENING INFO This film was available for Refugee Week 2020.
When the Taliban puts a bounty on Afghan director Hassan Fazili's head, he is forced to flee the country with his wife and two young daughters. Capturing the family's uncertain journey firsthand, Fazili documents their harrowing trek across numerous borders revealing the danger and uncertainty facing refugees seeking asylum juxtaposed with the unbreakable love shared amongst the family on the run.
The more problems my family experienced, and the harder life was for us, the stronger the images were. Hassan Fazili
Directed by Hassan FaziliProduced by Emelie Coleman Hahdavian and Su Kim
AWARDS & NOMINATIONSSundance 2019 (World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award)
RESOURCES
Screen Daily - Sundance Review
Interview with Director, Hassan Fazili
SCREENING INFOYou can access the film (rent or buy option) via: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details?id=3ouSVo752m4.P
A compelling, ground-level immersion into the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time, Sky & Ground accompanies the Nabi clan, a large, extended Syrian-Kurdish family, as they painstakingly make their way from their home in Aleppo, bombed out by the war, to the Idomeni refugee camp on the border of Greece and Macedonia. Their goal is Berlin, where they will reunite with family members and seek asylum but first they must make the arduous and dangerous journey through Serbia, Hungary and Austria.
DIRECTORS/PRODUCERS: Talya Tibbon & Joshua Bennett
RESOURCES
THIS IS HOME is an intimate portrait of four Syrian refugee families arriving in America and struggling to find their footing. With only eight months of help from the International Rescue Committee to become self-sufficient, they must forge ahead to rebuild their lives in a new home: Baltimore, Maryland. They attend cultural orientation classes and job training sessions where they must "learn America" -- everything from how to take public transportation to negotiating new gender roles.When the newly imposed travel ban adds further questions and complications, their strength and resilience are put to the test. Through humour and heartbreak, this universal story illuminates what it's like to start over, no matter the obstacles. THIS IS HOME goes beyond the statistics, headlines, and political rhetoric to tell deeply personal stories, putting a human face on the global refugee crisis. Via Bullfrog Films
Directed by Alexandra Shiva
Produced by Alexandra Shiva and Lindsey Megrue
AWARDS & NOMINATIONS
Audience Award, World Cinema Documentary, Sundance Film Festival
Video Librarian 2019 Best Documentaries
Winner, duPont-Columbia Award
Director's Award, Foreign Documentary, Cinetopia Film Festival
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Cleveland International Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
Jerusalem Film Festival
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
Florida Film Festival
Telluride Mountain Film Festival
Woods Hole Film Festival
Nantucket Film Festival
Maryland Film Festival
Salem Film Fest
Berkshire International Film Festival
Women + Film Festival
Define American Film Festival
Capital City Film Festival
NHdocs
North Dakota Human Rights and Arts Festival
Arab Film Festival (Arab Film and Media Institute) Middle East Film Festival
Beacon Independent Film Festival
ReadingFilmFEST
Global Migration Film Festival
RESOURCES
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