Documentary

Films

Short Films

Shows

An orphan escapes Ethiopia and heads to England, where she grows up and works to help fellow immigrants reunite with their families.

Drama | 111 min

Sweetness in the Belly

An unlikely team of Zimbabwean refugees turned sommeliers shake up the international wine establishment when they compete in the Blind Tasting World Championships.

Documentary | 96 min

Blind Ambition

The U.S. and the Holocaust: Series tells the story of how the American people grappled with one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century, and how this struggle tested the ideals of their democracy.

Documentary | 6 parts

The U.S. and the Holocaust

Abdulkader fled the war in Syria and crossed the Mediterranean. Now he’s pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming a ‘nez:’ a master perfumer.

Documentary | 29 min

L’essence des Souvenirs: Itinéraire d’un Apprenti Parfumeur

The remarkable story of Payam Akhavan, one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers and his fight for justice for the Rohingya.

Biography | 78 min

In Search of a Better World

Through the grassroots campaign of electoral hopeful Rosa Iris, this new documentary reveals the depths of racial hatred and institutionalized oppression that divide Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Stateless

A powerful and moving documentary with first-person testimonies from the survivors featured in The Windermere Children.

Documentary | 59 min

The Windermere Children: In Their Own Words

When the refugee crisis hit, American taxi driver Mary Ann started transporting asylum seekers to the Canadian border at Roxham Road. The people she’s helped have changed her world.

Documentary | 18 min

Road to Roxham

After five citizens of the Virgin Islands are convicted in the 1970s of a massacre at one of the island's fancy country clubs, their ostensible leader stages a skyjacking and escapes to Cuba.

Documentary | 75 min

The Skyjacker's Tale

In Ethiopia, it is often said that “an artist in exile is like a fish out of water.” Despite this belief, a growing number of Ethiopian artists, musicians, writers, actors and journalists are fleeing the violence and repression that is spreading in Ethiopia. Many have landed in Toronto, thanks to Canada’s refugee policy. Safe from physical persecution, they must begin the emotional and spiritual struggle that comes from being cut off not only from the community and people they love the most, but also from elements of life that gave them purpose. Famous at home, they have become nobodies in exile. In Tizita, three Ethiopian musicians reflect on what they have left behind, how they made it to Canada and how they are trying to rebuild their identities — to become new fish in new water. The film follows the musicians as they gather to play music drawn from the unique Ethiopian traditional pentatonic musical scale. The scale contains different combinations that are tied to specific themes — “tizita” is associated with songs and stories built around memories. The film is directed by Gezahegn M. Demissie, an Ethiopian documentary filmmaker who is also a refugee in Canada, trying to reinvent himself.

Documentary | 19 min

Tizita

Vika - a seventeen year-old Ukrainian orphan with fiery red hair, bright blue eyes and an everlasting laugh - is setting out into the world for the very first time, all alone. Vika is the story of her final year at a rural boarding school in Eastern Ukraine. It’s also the story of the bond she fights to maintain with her 10 year-old sister, Arina. Arina was adopted by a family in Toronto four years ago, during the Ukrainian revolution. Arina has a blissful childhood, with a family in Toronto offering her guidance, unconditional love and the types of opportunities Vika never had. Vika, meanwhile, is stepping out into the world as an adult for the first time, moving to another city  and leaving behind the only support she's ever known. Vika hasn't seen Arina since she left Ukraine, but her ultimate goal is to one day reunite with her sister - the only family she has left - and start a life in Canada. Reuniting the girls has always been the plan for Arina’s adoptive mother Alena, herself a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada. When she and her husband Slava made the decision to adopt, the sisters were already separated: Vika was put in a boarding school while her mother was alive; Arina was put in foster care after their mother’s death. Alena and Slava only met Vika later; they wanted to bring her to Toronto, but as a family of limited means, supporting both girls was impossible. Before Vika can move to Canada, she’ll need to navigate the troublesome waters of life on her own, in a country where orphans are disproportionately abused, neglected and brutally stigmatised by society. As few as five percent of Ukrainian orphans make a successful transition to adult life. The majority fall victim to poverty, drugs, alcohol, crime, trafficking and suicide. Vika has a real chance to break the mold, but it’s up to her to do it all alone.

Biography | 26 min

Vika

Dilveen is a Yazidi. Her people have lived in Northern Iraq since it was called Mesopotamia. For eleven year-old Dilveen, life was good on her family’s farm. She was a normal girl. She played soccer with her friends, went to school and helped her father sell his vegetables in town. When ISIS invaded the region in the summer of 2014, everything changed. Dilveen witnessed the execution of her father, and became one of thousands of Yazidi girls kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery. She was sold to a sixty-five year-old man, who planned to take her to Syria for marriage. Dilveen hatched a daring escape plan that allowed both her and another girl being held captive to flee. She was reunited with her family and now lives in Southern Ontario with her mother, aunts, and siblings. She has just started high school and is learning English. Her story is captured in this harrowing short documentary that juxtaposes haunting hand-drawn animated sequences of the past, with glimpses of Dilveen’s new life in Canada. Through her courage and strength, audiences will come to better understand the atrocities the Yazidi community continues to suffer through.

Biography | 12 min

Dilveen

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All "Refugees" content