A naïve and "nice" West Indian's descent into postcolonial cynicism is depicted in a twenty minute monologue from writer Farrukh Dhondy.
Social & External
The people behind it
Norman Beaton
Based on true accounts, the superficial lines between subject and bystander are blurred and bound together, allowing individuals to walk in a vast space and thoroughly live a fragment of the refugees' personal journeys.
In 1919, a group of Japanese immigrants arrives in Hawaii. Among them Yoshio Inoue and his wife Kishimo and Sumi, a young woman ready to get married soon. With the soil that is hard to work and the subtropical climate, the immigrants have to cope with a hard life. But after years of hard work, Yoshio finds work as a teacher while his wife manages to open a small grocery store. But with the war around the corner, life becomes more and more complicated for the Japanese immigrants in a foreign country.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a German household attempts to stay isolated from their new surroundings, in the south of Brazil. Their fear, however, sets the way for conflict.
In New York, a Korean immigrant family of four leads separate lives, each facing moments of defeat in their daily existence. As they navigate complexities of survival and disconnection, they each hide their wounds from one another
A Polish-Jewish family comes to the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century. There, the family and their children try to make themselves a better future in the so-called promised land.
Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.
Sam, a soldier who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, meets Amira when he visits her uncle, Bassam, who had served as Sam's Iraqi translator. Bassam and Sam have a special bond due to their time together in the war. Initially Amira does not trust him because he was an American soldier and her brother was killed by a bomb from American troops in the war. Sam's cousin, Charlie, asks Sam to help him with illegal hedge funds unbeknownst to Sam at the time. Amira is staying with her uncle Bassam since her father died. She sells bootlegged films on the street corner but is forced to stay with Sam after getting busted; immigration officials begin pursuing her. As the film progresses, Sam and Amira fall in love.
Olivia (12), just moved with her family from New York and arrives for her first day of school. She struggles to find her place within the hierarchy of her new school. Finding herself caught between the popular students and her shy classmate, Alem, Olivia must ultimately make a choice about who she is and how she will navigate her newfound circumstances.
Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.
Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.
An immigrant worker at a pickle factory is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern day Brooklyn. He learns his only surviving relative is his great grandson, a computer coder who he can’t connect with.
In southern France, a Franco-Arabic shipyard worker along with his partner's daughter pursues his dream of opening a restaurant.
New York layabout Willie forms an unexpected bond with his young Hungarian cousin Eva when she pays him a surprise visit. Later, Eva moves in with their aunt in Cleveland, and Willie takes his best friend Eddie to see her—a visit that culminates in a strange, eventful trip to Florida.
Two trouble-causing brothers, who in the second generation after World War II Germany live, are in the center of this German made for TV movie. The movie makes a subject out of their everyday lives and the helpless attempt for them to build a normal life.
Following the death of his wife, Ip Man travels to San Francisco to ease tensions between the local kung fu masters and his star student, Bruce Lee, while searching for a better future for his son.
A simple Chinese immigrant wages a perilous war against one of the most powerful criminal organizations on the planet.
In a field surrounded and squeezed by increasing industrialization, an immigrant family, deep in financial debt, struggles to survive through traditional farming. Their son, Ibrahim, dreams of a different future for himself.
A young Caribbean immigrant mother struggling to make ends meet at her dye factory job finds a release through her abandoned dream of dance.
Traces over three generations an immigrant family's trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs. Maria and Jose, the first generation, come to Los Angeles, meet, marry, face deportation all in the 1930s. They establish their family in East L.A., and their children Chucho, Paco, Memo, Irene, Toni, and Jimmy deal with youth culture and the L.A. police in the '50s. As the second generation become adults in the '60s, the focus shifts to Jimmy, his marriage to Isabel (a Salvadorian refugee), their son, and Jimmy's journey to becoming a responsible parent.
A bronc rider in denial about his fading rodeo career battles against brain injury and a sudden blizzard while reflecting on how it became so difficult to achieve his dreams.
Facing eviction in a city her family can no longer afford, a woman plunges into a desperate and increasingly dangerous all-night search to raise $25,000.
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Up-and-coming sports reporter rescues a homeless man ("Champ") only to discover that he is, in fact, a boxing legend believed to have passed away. What begins as an opportunity to resurrect Champ's story and escape the shadow of his father's success becomes a personal journey as the ambitious reporter reexamines his own life and his relationship with his family.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
