We are moving stories

“We hope this film inspires Americans to welcome refugees into their communities, and shows them how it can be done. The Obidat family is flourishing in part because their community has pitched in to provide resources and relationships that pick up where meager resettlement provisions end. Fundraising, donations, sponsorship of dance and music classes, passing job opportunities through word-of-mouth and volunteers for language instruction have provided stepping stones to full independence.

Though they could have folded, bent and broken under the circumstances of their life, the Obidats embraced every opportunity and pushed forward. Their new life in Chicago expands before them, as they jettison fear and doubt and reach for the future.”

“MATT: You should watch Irish Goodbye if you’re looking for a thoughtful character study of atypical leads and an examination of themes and issues like the conflict in Syria or people struggling with balancing their sexual identity with the taboos of their faith.

ADETOKUMBOH: Watch Irish Goodbye to see two fantastic leading actor performances. Abubakr Ali and Jack Lowe really created wonderfully complex, nuanced characters that felt real and relatable. Jacob Basheer and Youness also give some terrific supporting performances. And Yousof Sekander’s cinematography is just exquisite.”

“Searching Skies tells the story of refugees coming to the United States; as a child of immigrants myself, I think often of how my life’s opportunities would have been quite different if my parents had never immigrated from Taiwan, and their parents had never immigrated to Taiwan from China. There is a lot of xenophobia in this day and age, when in fact most came from some other place at some other time. It all feels rather subjective. ”

“My favourite response to the film has always been, “I can relate to this so much”. When a story touches you and bring you back to your childhood, whether it was a bad or good memory, I believe I’m on the right path. The response its had so far has been amazing.”

“The feedback for Little Rebel has been really wonderful. This story is not only timely in highlighting an issue that is at the forefront of American and global politics but it’s also a personal one, filled with a powerful and courageous woman’s voice - and I think viewers are hungry for those uplifting narratives right now.”

“After seeing the photograph of the drowned Syrian child Aylan Kurdi, we asked ourselves how can we help? So we made this short film and photography exhibition that we showed at RED Digital Cinema in Miami during Art Basel 2015. We donated sales from the prints to the International Refugee Committee. Over 1000 guest made a stand with us at opening night.

Displacement, cultural migration and memory are central to the theme of this poetic short film and photographic work. As reality weighs heavily on our conscience, stirred up by the inundation of horrific narratives and footage. Refugees abandoning the ills of their long loved countries delving into the brutality of the unknown.”

“During the summer of 2015, when the refugee crisis was really starting to hit the headlines, I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the media and politicians’ emphasis on the inconvenience they were causing to the UK and Europe (e.g. PM David Cameron referring to the ‘swarm of people’ heading our way), rather than the fact that we were witnessing the biggest humanitarian crisis of recent history. ”

“Who am I without my homeland, without my friends and without a chance to express myself with language? What do I keep and what am I willing to give off, when I have to start a new life? I’M OKAY starts as a film about refugees and it ends as a film about children and their families, telling their own but universal story about the search for a safe home, happiness and dignity in life.”

“When I followed Wasi through his illegal bus ride through Europe ending up in Italy trying to get asylum I knew that the answer to his new claim would be the end of the film. What I did not know was the huge difficulty I faced filming a traumatized boy and that he would end up in such a state as he did. I tried to film observational style (Frederik Wiseman) but in the end the real life events meant I had to involve myself in the film. Literally.
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“When we started this project there where so many refugees coming to Germany and to our city. People collecting clothes for them, camps for the arriving at the central station… You could not not meet them. At the same time though there was a lot of hate and fear within the society. As I talked to some of the refugees they told me stories about how they got here that I couldn’t even imagine. This is why the film got really personal in the end. I wanted to tell the story of those who came here and show that they where just human beings as we all are, with the same feelings.”

“ALEXANDER: It’s an opportunity to step inside someone’s shoes who, before, would have been completely forgotten. Nazem is a remarkable man, to be perfectly honest, and unless you are to see it, you simply cannot begin to comprehend the hardship he and his two boys faced. ”

“My film addresses a very dramatic and difficult topic for our country, but the story is told in the funniest and most entertaining way, to make it easy for the audience to connect with it. This might be a very common thing in Hollywood, but you don’t see it very often in Germany.”

“I travel very often. I make portrait puppets inspired by the people I meet in my everyday life, and I usually carry them with me through the trip. They are like immigrants and I am the one who carries them over the borders. As the immigration crises raised, I felt the urge to make a film about immigrants with my puppets to tell their stories.”

“I must say that directly or indirectly, the plight of the migrant and the displaced has always been familiar to me. I am both lucky and grateful to say that when my family and I resettled from Colombia to the U.S., it was voluntary—yet the purpose was the same, to seek a better future. So, although I was not undocumented, I had friends, colleagues and family that were and my understanding of what that meant was always crystal clear.”

“When we celebrate female heroes in cinema – we not only amplify their voices – but we empower their audience to be touched and emboldened by their courage.”

“I did not plan on making this film, I decided to travel to the refugee camp to volunteer for some weeks as I could simply not sit at home anymore and keep reading the horrible and devastating news of the refugee crisis. I needed to go there and do something, even a small thing. After several days in the camp I realized that what I was witnessing was too big not to bring back a testimony. So I used my small camera and filmed it all, without any crew or microphones. ”

“Our film is a labor of love. I had just returned to Lebanon from Canada and was spending some time with my family in the Bekaa Valley. That’s when I met Reem, the main character of our film. She really stole my heart, and then I met her family. All of them Syrian refugees living and working from our horse stables.”

“It’s my grandparents story. As a kid I kept hearing about that one time when my grandfather convinced my grandmother to escape communist East Germany into the Golden West in a handmade rubber boat. Then when I started making films, it just seemed like a wonderful homage to them and a great story to tell. ”

“I’m first generation American, and while knew the general fact that my parents came to the US during the Vietnam war, I had never actually asked my parents about their journey here...and they had never told me. It was such a life altering experience getting to hear their story and learning about my history, I was moved to create a narrative short based off the newly told story of my family’s escape.”

“The goal of this film is to tell people an unknown story contained within the most documented event in history – the Second World War. What’s significant isn’t only that we’re rescuing that history, but where we’re uncovering it from: the memories elderly Polish grandmothers, my own and others.”