Common Ground

Rosine Mbakam is invited to step in Sabine’s small hairdresser’s because it is dangerous in the street. She accepts and pushes in with her camera. Sabine’s stories and the customers’ joys, worries, problems and fears bring depth and life into the premises. At times, it feels like the entire African quarter of Brussels had squeezed in. Laughter abounds, anecdotes and life stories elicit emotions, and a male visitor brings a touch of flirt into the salon.

A couple of artists travels through the Mexico desert to present their puppet show.

It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.

This short documentary shows the reactions of European immigrants as they land in Halifax at the beginning of the 1960s. From the port, we follow them on a snowy journey by train to Montreal.

Because of the poor employment situation in Finland, many families and single people decided to move to Sweden to seek employment in the 1960s and 70s. The move was considered temporary and it affected people’s ways of making themselves at home in the new country; they did not even try to adapt or learn the language of the country. At that time, the nicknames “Finnjävel” and “Hurri” were well-known to Swedish-Finnish youngsters: In Sweden, they were regarded as Finns; and the other way around. As neither nation’s citizens approved them as their own, the Sweden Finns had to create their own identity. But what kind of lives do these immigrants’ children and grandchildren live today? Jonas Karén was born in a Finnish family in Husby’s suburb 1980.

At the turn of the century, Sephardic Jews fled the turmoil of their homeland to start a new life in America. Filled with interviews, archival photos and dozens of Ladino phrases, this slice of Northwest history captures their story as they arrived in Seattle and found work at the Pike Place Market.

Migranta tells the stories of Vicky, Betty and Lety, (three mothers who have come to Canada from Mexico as part of the federal government’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program) as they face calculated risks, difficult choices and harsh realities while navigating, work and life in Canada while being separated from families and communities they support.

„The Frontier“ or „La Frontera“ is the undulating landscape of the Sonora Desert in Arizona, which once was a symbol of freedom on the horizon of the American West – and also a region plagued by recurrent territorial struggles. Currently, a high steel fence stretches over several miles strictly separating the USA and Mexico into two territories. Every year, the remains of hundreds of migrants are retrieved from the area. The tense situation in Arizona’s borderland has split the locals into two groups: one demanding a more technically advanced border control system, the other requesting more humanitarian help. Accompanying various locals, NGO workers and self-proclaimed border guards from the region, filmmaker Gudrun Gruber raises the question of whether the latest border control technology will finally bring peace to the area, or rather merely increase the number of deaths.