London Migration Film Festival 2021
Live programme
Check out the online programme - where films will be available to stream from 25 Nov - 1 Dec 2021
And in case you can’t wait for the festival to begin, then watch two films curated by London Migration Film Festival at Mosaic Rooms throughout November.
Asmat – Names (Italy, 2015) by Dagmawi Yimer and The Great Wall (2015) by Tadgh O’Sullivan will screen in Mosaic Rooms’ The Living Room (Al-Madafeh) space alongside their current exhibition Stateless Heritage by DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti.
* Opening Night *
The London Migration Film Festival will kick off its 6th annual edition with a night of music, celebration and connection!
Headlining the night will be Kadialy Kouyate and his band. Kadialy is a singer songwriter inspired by the West African Griot repertoire. Born into the great line of Kouyate Griot in Southern Senegal, we hope you appreciate Kadialy’s mesmerising kora playing and singing style as much as we do!
Upstairs at the Ritzy, Thu 25 November from 7pm. Tickets
It's been 10 years since Lina left her home country of Peru to work in Chile as a housekeeper to a wealthy family. The job has provided Lina with sufficient earnings to live frugally and have enough left over to send money back home to her son Junior who has grown from a small child to an adolescent in her absence. Now, with Christmas just around the corner, Lina is finally preparing to return to Lima for a belated visit. The thing is, Junior seems more concerned about getting an authentic soccer jersey than reuniting with his mother. What's more, Lina's bank account is in danger of getting drained when her employer's newly installed pool is unexpectedly damaged under her watch.
At once a delightful renovation of the musical comedy and a timely examination of the realities of migrant labour, the inventive debut fiction feature from Chilean director María Paz González tackles weighty themes with a light touch and a saucy sense of humour.
Dir: María Paz González
Runtime: 83mins
Genesis Cinema, Fri 26 November, 6:35pm. Tickets
Lucía just moved to the US with her two sons, Max and Leo. While Lucía struggles to make a living in spite of working long hours, the two brothers spend their days in their sparsely furnished one-room flat. The walls of the room, which they are forbidden to leave, become a projection screen for imaginative adventures and open a window on their new life.
The Wolves is a film that draws on universal themes of parenthood, loneliness and having to adapt to unforeseen circumstances – and exposes the immobility and the feeling of being neither here nor there at the heart of so many experiences of migration.
Dir: Samuel Kishi Leopo
Runtime: 95mins
Screened alongside short film Two Nights and Three Days (20 mins; dir by Tomás Fernández Vértiz).
The Lexi Cinema, Fri 26 November, 6pm. Tickets
‘We are all migrants through time’ writes Mohsin Hamid in his novel Exit West. In saying this he exposes an assumption at the heart of current rhetoric on migration: space takes precedent over time, and migration is talked about as physical movement from place to place.
But what can we gain from thinking about migration in a wider sense, one that includes time and space? How have portrayals of migration changed over the years? How does displacement mirror the alienation between generations? And could it be said that migration is simply another form of change?
We invite you to sit at our Long Table and take part in discussions with artists, people who move, archivists and academics to talk about the relationship between migration and time.
Everyone is welcome to take a seat at the Long Table. Developed by Lois Weaver, the concept aims to break down hierarchies of ‘spectator’ and ‘expert’, inviting guests to come and go between table and audience.
Upstairs at the Ritzy, Sat 27 November, 2pm. Tickets
SOLD OUT
A Horse Has More Blood Than a Human (dir: Abolfazl Talooni): An elderly couple leave Tehran and return to their idyllic home town on the Turkish border, but their dreams of quiet retirement are shattered by the realisation that their town has become a smuggling gateway out of Iran.
Hevi (dir: Mohammad Shaikho): Hévi and Walat, a young Kurdish refugee couple have arranged to meet a human smuggler to cross an undefined border to a place of freedom.
Frontier (Hranice) (dir: Damián Vondrášek): During a roundup of asylum seekers in the Czech border area, an underage boy escapes. The commander tries to deal with the situation according to the rules but in the process comes into conflict with his own conscience.
A Year in Exile (dir: Malaz Usta): An immigrant’s first year in a metropolitan city outside his small country. Through a collection of moving images and sounds we see what he faces, the pictures that he sees, the crowded thoughts in his head, and the state of emotional shock that he lives throughout the year.
Upstairs at the Ritzy, Sat 27 November, 4:30pm. Tickets
SOLD OUT
In 2019, after months of protests across Sudan, the military removed thirty-year dictator Omar al-Bashir and cracked down in a violent fashion on the civilian sit-in outside its headquarters.The Internet was shut down, leaving those outside Sudan to voice a plea for peaceful transition to civilian government. An ocean away, Sudanese-American poets and musicians, whose families left Sudan for America in decades past, gather in major American cities to perform in support of the revolution.
At the heart of the film is a conversation around identity, belonging, and the uncertain future of Sudan, from which they have been physically cut off. What happens when they can only watch from afar?
Dir: Bentley Brown
Runtime: 67mins
Q&A with director Bentley Brown and musician Ramey Dawoud. Chaired by Dalia Al-Dujaili, arts & culture journalist currently at Azeema Mag.
The Lexi Cinema, Sat 27 November, 6pm. Tickets
In Afghanistan kite fliers of all ages come together to display the beautiful kites they have made and sometimes fly them in competitions. At this family-friendly workshop participants will get an opportunity to make an Afghan kite of their own with Ahmadzia Bakhtyari, former resident artist at the Horniman Museum.
All materials are provided and each attendee will bring home their very own completed kite.
Mosaic Rooms, Sun 28 November, 1pm. Free event! RSVP here.
652 miles = 0 (or the wonderful convenience of videocalling) (dir: Giulio Gobbetti): During a time of quarantine, global distances contract. The 652 miles separating the director’s London home from his grandmother in Italy are not any different than the distance between her and her neighbours. As most interpersonal relationships are brought into the online world, there is no better opportunity to teach her remotely how to do video-calls.
On the Surface (dir: Fan Sissoko): As the woman enters the freezing water, she relives her traumatic pregnancy and postnatal depression. Soon her swimming eases. Being in the wild and facing her fears is helping her heal.
Hedgehog (dir: Masha Novikova): Vera, a young shop stylist, hires her father as her assistant to prepare for a fancy boutique's grand opening. She fears that his casual nature won't fit with the boss's expectations and is torn between them.
The King (dir: Maria Claudia Blanco): Li, an undocumented migrant in Paris, works as a professional queue-tailer. He does everything so that his daughter does not have to follow the same path of exploitation.
Farewell Daddy (dir: Bianca Sescu): In a Romanian village, a family prepares a last meal before the father leaves for England. He invites a childhood friend, who will lend him money for his family while waiting for his first salary.
Birds of Passage (dir: Lisa Meyer): Lorin’s family lives undocumented in Sweden and must suddenly move. They are taken to church, far away from Lorin’s friends in school. Lorin now needs to decide if she can accept the situation or try to find herself a way out of it.
Of Memory and Debris (dir: Rodrigo Michelangeli): A glimpse into an unseen Venezuelan generation — the grandparents left behind by the largest exodus in Latin America's recent history.
Upstairs at the Ritzy, Sun 28 November, 1pm. Tickets
A documentary that offers a crash course on the causes, effects and future of forced migration around the globe, as told through the eyes of one young filmmaker on the mission to educate himself.
Absolutely essential viewing for anyone interested in learning about migration but unsure where to begin!
Dir: Andres Bronniman
Runtime: 90mins
Screened alongside short film Riders, Uniting (4 mins; dir by Will Hecker, Elena Luque)
Upstairs at the Ritzy, Sun 28 November, 3pm. Tickets
Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.
“What can we ever really know about each other? The mystery of other people’s lives, the unbridgeable gulf between us all – even, or especially, between married couples – is the subject of this outstanding drama from first-time film-maker Aleem Khan. It is a gulf as dour as the Channel.” (The Guardian)
Dir: Aleem Khan
Runtime: 89mins
Screened alongside short films: Your Hand Found Mine (3 mins; dir by Elham Ehsas) and Bidēśi Mahilā (4 mins; dir by Hussina Raja)
Genesis Cinema, Sun 28 November, 3:30pm. Tickets
London Migration Film Festival and The People’s Film Club present:
Flee tells the story of Amin Nawabi. Amin’s childhood, as with many others like him, was interrupted in the late 80s as conflict forced him and his family to escape their home, finding their way to Moscow. The following years are then told in pieces: fearful encounters with corrupt Russian police, desperate attempts to smuggle the family bit by bit to Europe.
Recounted mostly through animation and archive footage, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan. Flee shares a ‘remarkable refugee story told with heart and audacity’ (The Guardian).
We will be taking over Genesis Bar with music, stalls and more all afternoon, followed by an introduction to the film.
All funds raised will be donated to Care 4 Calais
Dir: Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Runtime: 90mins
Q&A with Gulwai Passerlay (author, advocate, humanitarian and spokesperson), Syed Haleem Najibi (actor and activist), Dr Ayesha Ahmad (Senior lecturer in Global Health at St George's UoL), and Jamie Bell (public and immigration law solicitor at Duncan Lewis)
Genesis Cinema, Sun 28 November, 5:40pm. Tickets
Antonio has spent most of his life in Luxemburg and away from Italy, his home country. Now in his old age, he crosses paths with Leo, a young Italian artist who is trying to make it abroad. The old man and the young woman's destinies mirror one other. Memories from the past are awoken and end up offering a more peaceful future to the both of them.
Dir: Donato Rotunno
Runtime: 100mins
Genesis Cinema, Sun 28 November, 8pm. Tickets
In Collaboration with Cinema Italia UK
After a devastating typhoon in the Philippines, three characters must decide whether to stay home or escape to Manila and leave their pasts behind.
A surreal story of climate migration as environmental catastrophy turns the world upside down.
Dir: Carlo Francisco Manatad
Runtime: 105mins
SOAS (Khalili Lecture Theatre), Mon 29 November, 6:45pm. Tickets
Delphine is a young Cameroonian woman living in Belgium. Through a series of confessions from Delphine, a powerful portrait emerges of a generation of women lost to the dream of a better world in Europe.
“A captivating, vital record of a life of hardship held together by Mbakam’s unfussy, sensitive direction and its subject’s charisma, disarming honesty and equal parts strength and vulnerability” (The Film Magazine)
Dir: Rosine Mbakam
Runtime: 91mins
“I see everything,” she says as if it was a curse. Brilliant sunshine, clear blue skies. The sea is calm, framed by a piece of railing. A peaceful moment if it weren’t for the fact that the sea is standing upright, vertical, like a waterfall. Her boat sank somewhere between Turkey and Greece. A rush of images, twirling, upside down, jolting. People in the boat, in the water, screams, life jackets, emergency whistles. Even time’s flow comes to a halt, contracting into the brutal present. She is filming and speaking. To beat being tired, being cold, the fact that help isn’t coming. To beat dying, just for something to remain.
This essential film from Syrian director Amel Alzakout charts the sinking of her own boat using footage from a waterproof camera. A striking and provocative documentary that confronts viewers with questions of the ethics of documentary filmmaking - and watching.
Dir: Amel Alzakout, Khaled Abdulwahed
Runtime: 67mins
Q&A with Alexandra Chen (a child protection and mental health specialist with Syrian refugees in Greece, Lebanon and Jordan) and Dr Federica Mazzara (Reader in Cultural Studies at University of Westminster)
Bertha Dochouse, Tue 30 November, 6:20pm, Tickets
Four young men from Sudan are sitting on the back of a lorry that, they hope, will take them to the UK. As they wait for the lorry to leave, they talk about everything from the practicalities of journeying to the UK from Sudan, to what drove them to leave and their hopes for the future, while they reflect on a system that excludes them from a dignified life.
An improvisation in front of the camera, in this docu-fiction the thoughts and hopes of people often demonised by the current rhetoric on migration take centre stage.
Dir: Effi Weiss and Amir Borenstein
Runtime: 75mins
Q&A with Samah Bushra (activist, playwrite and founder of Refugee Access) and Maria Stephens (advocacy manage at Refugee Action)
Screened alongside short film Mesogeios (3 mins; dir: Marco Biotto) and A Monster Outside of Human Laws (14 min, dir: nnull)
Genesis Cinema, Tue 30 November, 6:30pm. Tickets
The border between the Republic of Ireland and the UK runs in the middle of a beautiful glacial fjord. The Carlingford Ferry crosses the Carlingford Lough on a daily basis, bringing people from one side to the other. Here we meet characters from North and South, with different points of view, making the journey through the magnificent, green Irish landscape.
A film exploring identity and community on an isle divided by not one, but two borders: a physical one between the UK and Ireland, and psychological one between seemingly incompatible opinions on the role of the border. Opinions that might change when the personal surpasses the ideologic.
A deceptively light-hearted examination of Brexit and its effects on a complex border.
Dir: Annabel Verbeke
Q&A with Calvin Po (designer, researcher, and architect in training), Cherry Smyth (poet, novelist, critic and curator), and Darran Anderson (writer, author of Inventory and Imaginary Cities)
Bertha Dochouse, Wed 1 December, 6:20pm, Tickets
Join us for the online finale of London Migration Film Festival 2021 with a special online screening of Hostile, followed by a special Q&A
Told through the stories of four participants from Black and Asian backgrounds, Hostile focuses on the impact of the evolving ‘hostile environment’ policies that target migrants. It explores how the lives of international students, members of the Windrush generation and ‘Highly-Skilled Migrants’ have been affected.
Most importantly, it asks - of viewers, of the UK government - what does it mean to be British? What does it mean to be told you don’t belong? Director Sonita Gale seeks to hear these voices and inspire viewers to take action in order to create long-term change.
This special online screening of Hostile will be followed by a Q&A with experts by experience, journalists, lawyers and more.
Dir: Sonita Gale