Butterflies Can't Swim

Tahir Agha sells all his assets when his business in Maraş deteriorates. He immigrates to Istanbul with his wife Hatice, sons Selim, Murat, Kemal and daughter Fatoş, where he sets his mind to open a repair shop. But in the metropolis, things don't go as planned.

A Lebanese migrant in The Netherlands receives a haunting voice message from his former best friend in Beirut.

Soriba Samb is a Senegalese who has just received a much sought after internship to study filmmaking in Paris. Soriba heads to Paris, accompanied by the five-year old son of a friend who he believes to be still living in Paris. On arrival he struggles to find the boy’s father. In addition to coping with his new internship, Soriba has to also spend time tracking down the boy’s father ‘Issa’.

The story of Alex, who, with the help of his charismatic grandfather, embarks on a journey in search of his real self.

An impressionistic look at Irish emigrants in London, representing the emigrant's journey, a confusion of anticipation, memories and experience.

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.

Maysa unfolds over a single afternoon as a young woman and her stoic middle eastern mother navigate the quiet tension of a long-held silence. As memories of migration and girlhood surface in fractured flashbacks, their unspoken history begins to unravel. A tender, restrained portrait of love, resilience, and the things women carry - even when they no longer have to.

A man and his dog cross the desert in search of La Frontera, a mighty river that represents the geographical limit with the neighboring territory. Exhausted, they manage to see their goal, but they must cross other obstacles before conquering its waters.

This anthology film, whose Chinese title begins with a romantic name for human excrement, premiered internationally at Rotterdam and won Best Screenplay from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. A variety of Hong Kong people wrestle with nostalgia when facing an uncertain future. Their stories give way to a documentary featuring a young barista turned political candidate.

Sister Tse is brought to New York by a Snakehead, a human smuggler. Although she is indebted to the crime family responsible for her transport, her survival instincts help her gain favor with the matriarch, and she rises quickly in the ranks. Soon Tse must reconcile her success with her real reason for coming to America—to find the child that was taken from her. In the end, Sister Tse must draw on the strength she found in transforming her victimhood into power.

Just married Hong Kong couple Chen & Lily emigrate to England, soon to become parents to a little baby boy and generally struggle through life. Chen works long days in a restaurant, while Lily does the housekeeping, daydreaming of setting up their own business, much to Chen's chagrin. When Chen lets his colleague Fok seduce him down a path of mounting gambling debts, he is recruited as a drug courier for a shadowy Chinese triad. Suddenly he realizes that getting their own enterprise could be their only means of escape.

An epic love story spanning decades is sparked by a chance encounter between two men in provincial Mexico. Based on a true story, ambition and societal pressure propel an aspiring chef to leave his soulmate and make the treacherous journey to New York, where life will never be the same.

The parallel stories of four Pakistani immigrants in Greece become the trigger for the director to explore the story of his father, a worker in the Perama Shipyard. The background unfolds a most deadly shipwreck, Libyan immigrants found in limbo, as well as a (possibly racist) crime, which was committed during the shooting of this film.

A family tribe of Cro-Magnons faces hardships, such as hunger, animal attacks, Neanderthal attacks, and death from injuries as they migrate to find a more bountiful land to live on.

Having fled Albania over 30 years ago, Agim and Erjon have led different lives. Their father's last wish brings them back. There they have to confront their past, their fragile relationship and a country that has changed as much as they have.

[poem_body_memory_voice] None of them belong to each other. All of them belong to themselves. A layered accumulation —___- a poetic exercise on relating*_on_love, migration, and mourning.