1. Golden Door (Nuovomondo)
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
It has an average vote of 6.5 on TMDB.
2. Heidi in China
In 1946, Heidi is entrusted to a Swiss family by her father. He will never come back for her. Today, François Yang questions his mother about her past. What follows is a journey to China, a quest to reconstruct memory. Through contact with her brothers and sister, Heidi measures the extent of the drama experienced by her family that remained in China, persecuted by the Communist Party.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
3. Day of Independence
Zip, a 17 year-old Nisei baseball pitcher, faces the tragic circumstances of the World War II internment of 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry. Set in a relocation camp in the summer of 1943, this film chronicles the journey of an American family torn apart by a forced and unjust incarceration, a father's decision that challenges his son to find strength, and ultimately his son's triumph through courage, sacrifice and the All-American game of baseball.
4. The Last Daughter
Brenda’s first memories were of growing up in a loving white foster family, before she was suddenly taken away and returned to her Aboriginal family. Decades later, she feels disconnected from both halves of her life, so she goes searching for the foster family with whom she had lost contact. Along the way she uncovers long-buried secrets, government lies, and the possibility of deeper connections to family and culture.
5. Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution (Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution)
(Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution)
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
6. Nai Nai (奶奶)
Nai Nai follows the story of a Chinese immigrant grandmother, Chu-Ming Wu. Known as “Nai Nai,” Chu-Ming has always been a woman of control. But her grasp of reality and the control of her own mind is slipping away. Told through the lens of her grandson, the film focuses on the joyful, heartbreaking and intimate moments in the last chapters of her life.
7. El Paraíso (El Paraíso)
The film consists of video tapes made by the filmmaker’s father documenting daily scenes of family life, family celebrations, and holidays over the course of fifteen years. The tapes are a mixture of the personal and the political – the father was politically engaged in the revolutionary movement that brought Hugo Chávez to power. The family’s life becomes a backdrop for political and economic developments in Venezuela and their impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.
8. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam
Long Tack Sam was an internationally renowned Chinese acrobat and magician. He overcame isolation, poverty, cultural and linguistic barriers, extreme racism and world wars to become one of the most successful vaudeville acts of his time. His showmanship was unrivalled, yet he refused to appear in movies because of the way Chinese were portrayed at the time. A celebration of the spirit of Long Tack Sam's magic and art, this richly textured first person road movie is an exhilarating testament to his legacy and a prismatic tour through the 20th Century. It all begins in a small village in China...</p><p> https://www.nfb.ca/film/the_magical_life_of_long_tack_sam/
9. Lamborghini Connect
A woman tries to reach her man in his childhood town. While traveling, the woman reflects on her past, and the man thinks about his childhood adventures with his father in his Lamborghini Countach. Their current Lamborghinis help reconnecting with their youth.
10. The Secret of Roan Inish
Ten-year-old Fiona is sent to live with her grandparents in a small fishing village in Donegal, Ireland. She soon learns the local legend that an ancestor of hers married a Selkie – a seal who can turn into a human. Years earlier, her baby brother was washed out to sea and never seen again, so when Fiona spies a naked little boy on the abandoned Isle of Roan Inish, she is compelled to investigate.
It has an average vote of 6.6 on TMDB.
11. Ines, Memories of a Lifetime
When Ines died, she left a very particular legacy, 10 books that read 'For my children'; it was the story of her life. Marked by a youth idyllic love, Ines was forced to marry a violent and womanizer man with whom she had 20 children. In the 50s, she managed to get divorce and 20 years after her death, Luisa, great-granddaughter of INES, reads, rescues and makes visible her history.
12. You're Out of Your Mind, Madicken (Du är inte klok, Madicken)
Madicken is a Swedish girl from the upper level family, growing up during the time of first world war which did not include Sweden. She lives happily with her family, experiencing the world and making brave and crazy things.
It has an average vote of 6.13 on TMDB.
13. 77 Years Back (77 de Ani Înapoi)
Born in 1943 in Bessarabia region, Victor was forced to flee his homeland because of the war. After 77 years, his grandson, Dan, goes back there with his grandpa, Victor, who is recounting memories and seeking information about his birth and his lost relatives, in the country that is now the Republic of Moldova.
14. Family Ornaments
When a holiday wish wreaks havoc on a fractured family, they must work through their differences to defeat an army of magical Christmas ornaments.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
15. My America... or Honk If You Love Buddha
Renee Tajima-Peña takes to the road to investigate questions about Asian-American identity.
16. Lost in the Bewilderness
Lost in the Bewilderness is a feature-length documentary about the filmmaker’s cousin Lucas, kidnapped at age five from his native Greece, and found on the eve of his 16th birthday in the US. This story of international parental abduction, filmed for over twenty years, chronicles Lucas’s journey of growth and self-discovery, and culminates with Lucas becoming a father himself. Lost in the Bewilderness is not only a detective story but also a lyrical meditation on childhood, lost and found, and an exploration of how the themes of ancient Greek myth and tragedy, with the family at their center, are still very much alive in the modern world.
17. A Landscaped Area Too Quiet for Me (Una zona Ajardinada Demasiado Tranquila Para Mí)
Memory prevents rest and a woman about to die takes advantage of cinema to tell her story and to say goodbye. A terrace as a border and a song that crosses time. At home, nothing is always—and everything is still—in the present and defunct now. A home movie of ghosts, a generous gesture of intimacy and solidarity that not witnesses two people at the end of their long lives, but also reveals the weight of history and of the 20th century, which is always present today.
18. Stolen Ground
In US society, people of East Asian heritage are often perceived through an obscuring lens of ethnic and cultural stereotypes. In STOLEN GROUND, six Asian-American men talk about their experience of the highly racialized United States, and consider how racism has affected their lives and those of their family members.
19. Uploaded: The Asian American Movement
A documentary that explores the increasing visibility of Asian Americans in pop culture since the advent of new media forms such as YouTube.
20. Monsieur Mayonnaise
Artist and filmmaker Philippe Mora is producing a graphic novel about his late father, Georges, widely known in Melbourne as a beloved contemporary art patron and owner of bohemian eateries Mirka Café, Café Balzac and the Tolarno Restaurant and Galleries. Less known, however, is Georges' astonishing history as part of the French resistance during World War II, his friendship with renowned mime Marcel Marceau , and how together they saved thousands of Jewish lives with a fiendishly simple trick involving baguettes and mayonnaise.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
