GRAMNet Film Series

In Observance of International Day of Tolerance. 'A Portrait of James Connolly'.

'Beats of the Antonov' - Sudan has been in an almost constant state of civil war since it achieved independence in 1956, and it split into a pair of sovereign states in 2011. Today, on the border between the two, Russian-made Antonov planes indiscriminately drop bombs on settlements in the Nuba Mountains below. Yet, incredibly, the people of the Blue Nile respond to adversity with music, singing and dancing to celebrate their survival. Beats of the Antonov explores how music binds a community together, offering hope and a common identity for refugees engaged in a fierce battle to protect cultural traditions and heritage from those trying to obliterate them.

'Son of Saul' - Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and Golden Globe, Son of Saul is Hungarian director László Nemes' blistering debut feature, a courageous and unflinching reimagining of the Holocaust drama. Saul Ausländer is a member of the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners forced to assist in the machinery of the Nazi concentration camps. While at work, he discovers the body of a boy he recognises as his son. As the Sonderkommando plan a rebellion, Saul vows to carry out an impossible task: to save the child's body from the flames and to find a rabbi to recite the mourner's Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial. Anchored by a riveting and intensely brave performance from newcomer Géza Röhrig, Son of Saul is a remarkable exploration of one of humanity's darkest moments. Visceral, gripping and immensely powerful, it is one of the boldest and most remarkable debuts in recent memory – and is already being heralded as a masterpiece of world cinema.

'Chasing Asylum' - Chasing Asylum exposes the real impact of Australia's offshore detention policies and explores how ‘The Lucky Country' became a country where leaders choose detention over compassion and governments deprive the desperate of their basic human rights.

The film features never before seen footage from inside Australia's offshore detention camps, revealing the personal impact of sending those in search of a safe home to languish in limbo.

Chasing Asylum explores the mental, physical and fiscal consequences of Australia's decision to lock away families in unsanitary conditions hidden from media scrutiny, destroying their lives under the pretext of saving them.

'The Babushkas of Chernobyl' - In the radioactive Dead Zone surrounding Chernobyl's Reactor No. 4, a defiant community of women scratches out an existence on some of the most toxic land on Earth. They share this hauntingly beautiful but lethal landscape with an assortment of visitors – scientists, soldiers, and even ‘stalkers' – young thrill-seekers who sneak in to pursue post-apocalyptic video game-inspired fantasies. Why the women chose to return after the disaster – defying the authorities and endangering their health – is a remarkable tale about the pull of home, the healing power of shaping one's destiny, and the subjective nature of risk.

'A World Not Ours' is an intimate, humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family.

'I came from the unknown to sing' - Ghazi Hussein is an award winning Palestinian poet and writer living in Scotland. This short film explores his poetry as the narrative thread to unravel the complex emotional journey he has traveled through and how he came to eventually call Edinburgh home.

'Welcome to Refugeestan' - This film focuses on the way the UNHCR manages camps that shelter more than 16 million refugees all around the world, creating a virtual country as large as the Netherlands.

How does the UNHCR run these camps and train its representatives? How can they deal with the urgent needs of thousands of new refugees that arrive each day? How has this emergency response turned into a durable situation with an average stay of over fifteen years? What are the long-term perspectives for this kind of response to humanitarian urgency?

Shot all around the world – Kenya, Tanzania, Jordan, the border of Greece/Macedonia – and in the UNHCR offices.

Launch of the 2017/2018 GRAMNet/BEMIS Film Series, showing 'Constance on the Edge'.

Wallah - Je tu jure tells the stories of men and women travelling along West African migration routes to Italy. Senegal's rural villages, Niger's bus stations and "ghettos" full of traffickers, Italian squares and houses the the backdrops of these courageous trips, which often end in tragedy.