1. La Vie sans Brahim (La Vie sans Brahim)
(La Vie sans Brahim)
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
2. Border (越界)
In the middle of the strait between Kinmen and Xiamen, China, there are patches of sea filled with floating styrofoam and endless sand pilfering across the border. Huge business opportunities, and even greater land reclamations have scarred the beauty of the original rural landscapes for the sake of “ The Chinese Dream"—a dream that places economic achievements above all else.
3. Migrant Dreams
When Umi and Dwipa left Indonesia to work in an Ontario greenhouse as part of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program, they hoped the jobs would provide the opportunity and income for a better life. They didn't expect that fixers and false promises would lead to deception and exploitation. Sadly, their story is not uncommon. Min Sook Lee continues to speak truth to power with her commitment to providing a voice to the silenced, fulfilling documentary's capacity as a powerful tool for social change.
4. Unfinished Progress (建設未完成)
Giraffe-like construction cranes are avid eaters. They forage around in the woods and fields for their feeds: the collective longing for development and prosperity. As they crane their necks longer, they make the fantasy of progress more alluring. And that is what Chung-Ming Wang steps forward to fight. Left his stable life behind, he devoted himself into local environmentalism in his hometown Tamsui, tried to keep it distant from developmentalism that Taipei had been suffered for long. Few years later, he decided to change his way of political participation. This documentary film depicts his third attempt to run in the City Council Election in 2014, including the difficulties and conflicts he encounters and the diverse imaginations toward progress. The film also tries to brings up an important question: do we need more edifices in our city, or we need to find a way to edify ourselves?
5. The Man Who Died Once (Marisakeko Manchhe)
Tragic circumstances bring together the wife and the mother of two migrant workers - one from the east, the other from west Nepal.
6. A Tomato Tragedy
In southern Italy, stateless migrants pick the tomatoes the rest of the world will taste. But what about these workers’ European dreams? Will they be ground to a pulp? Our canned tomatoes are picked by migrant workers who have come to southern Italy to realise their dream of Europe. However, they never get beyond the tomato fields. This documentary shows how the tomato broaches a broader issue. Will the pickers keep believing in their dream, or fight against a Europe where others reap the sweet rewards of their disillusion?
7. Archiving Time (數電影的人)
In Taiwan, there is a group of people participating in this race against time. They are hidden inside the film archive of New Taipei City’s “Singapore Industrial Park”, where the 17,000-plus film reels and over a million film artifacts have become their spiritual nourishment. Day after day, they shuttle back and forth inside, carrying their doubts, their learnings, and their faith. What they are doing is awakening these long-neglected film reels, then piecing together the no-longer-existent social atmospheres and lives of distant pasts recorded on them. And spending time in this archive has become everyday life for these film archivists and restorers.
8. Freedom Runners
Rotem Genossar, a teacher at the Bialik-Rogozin campus in south Tel Aviv, founds a running group for his students, young African refugees whose families fled their homeland and now live in Israel without any legal status. At first running is just a social activity for the students, but it quickly becomes a means to fight for their civil rights, part of a struggle to secure them a place of their own, out of the margins of Israeli society.
9. A Greater Chance
Upon learning of his father's terminal illness diagnosis, a young, autistic, hearing-impaired music composer and sketch artist travels back to his home to be with him and his mother.
10. Island in Between (金門)
The rural Taiwanese outer islands of Kinmen sit merely 2 miles off the coast of China. Kinmen attracts tourists for its remains from the 1949 Chinese Civil War. It also marks the frontline for Taiwan in its escalating tension with China.
It has an average vote of 6.423 on TMDB.
11. Taiwan: The Generation After Martial Law (Taiwan: The Generation After Martial Law)
This program illustrates how video activists have developed sophisticated use of small format video, with poetic and powerful imagery, complex mixes of sounds and scores and an effective editing style that belies the urgency under which it is being made. The video movement in Taiwan has made successful use of home cassette distribution, via both mail and street vendors. The Green Team collective has pioneered in this effort with over 100 titles in distribution, documenting the struggles of farmers, students, workers and environmentalists.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
12. Sex: My British Job
Nick Broomfield met Hsiao Hung Pai, a journalist who was working for the Guardian, when making his feature film 'Ghosts' . As an experiment and using the latest in undercover technology, Nick worked with Hsiao to make a Undercover film set in a Chinese brothel in Finchley. There are over 2000 'illegal' brothels in London,largely ignored by the police and the authorities, which employ 80% foreign nationals, mostly illegal, that are easily exploited by the brothel owners.
It has an average vote of 5.4 on TMDB.
13. 刺蔣 (刺蔣)
A documentary of 24th April, 1970 assassination of Chiang Ching-kuo.
14. Wandering Peddlers (旅するパオジャンフー)
Resulting pic blurs the line between documentary and fiction as Yanagimachi explores the lives of a couple of groups of peddlers, and they appear to act out their personal dramas for the camera.
15. The Other Side (對岸異鄉人)
After 30 years of cold war, Taiwan and China finally opened cross-strait trade and tourism in 1980. However, through decades of political and educational vilification of their counterparts by the KMT and CCP, and despite close economic and cultural ties, what lies beneath the diplomatic relations is a disconnect and mistrust that cannot be denied. KE is a failed business in Taiwan who hopes to start over as a 'Taiwanese Expat' in Shenzheng, China with a Taiwanese company. Lili, a laborer from China, meets her Taiwanese husband online and moves to Taiwan in hopes of a better life. Both KE and Lili cross the straits in hope of achieving what they cannot find in their homeland. But how much do they really know about that country across the straits?
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
16. The Last Insurrection (末代叛亂犯)
Martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987. Since then, all kinds of reform and democratization were raised. However, in May 1991, four young people were arrested by the Bureau of Investigation . This had generated the fear in society and led to the so-called “White Terror.”
17. Bitter Sweet Ballad (风起前的蒲公英)
This is a story about youth with music. It all happens at the Dandelion School, Beijing’s first middle school specifically established for the children of migrant workers. Every year when new pupils arrive, Ms. Yuan Xiaoyan, who has worked in the school choir for eight years, would choose a group of music-loving first-years with solid musical foundations to join the choir. A new group of children join the choir while those who have advanced to the second year have to discuss with their families their future choices. For choir members, their music career in middle school will eventually stop due to the pressure of high school entrance examinations and the inevitable parting. But along this journey accompanied by music, they have been savoring the joys and sorrows of their youth, burying them deep in their hearts, and transforming them into growth-promoting nutrients.
18. Come Hungry: A Day in the Luzhou Night Market
As dawn breaks over Taipei, a whole world comes to life around the Luzhou temple night market, only to be dismantled by sunrise. In COME HUNGRY, Oscar-winner Carol Dysinger creates a city symphony out of the rhythms, sounds, colors, and flavors of this ephemeral community that revolves around Taiwanese food, traditions, and identity.
19. In Foreign Soil (In fremder Erde)
In fremder Erde documents the Muslim traditions of burial in Turkey and Germany, but above all, the paths the dead take to return to Anatolian soil.
20. The Workers Cup
Inside Qatar’s labor camps, African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 World Cup compete in a football tournament of their own.
It has an average vote of 4 on TMDB.