Xenophobia, fascism, and anti-immigrant rhetoric are surging once more. The amplification of a ‘them versus us’ binary serves as a weapon of the political elite, stoking division, while each election cycle resurrects the same exhausted refrains, increasingly dangerous, increasingly disruptive. Yet beyond the political spectacle lie real people: people with a desire for freedom, dreams of a better and safer life, and the deep, aching longing for the worlds they departed. Still, time moves forward. Bodies cross man-made borders in search of a dignified existence.
The films in this program offer a glimpse into the everyday intricacies of starting a new life in a foreign country while remaining tethered to the one abandoned. Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s For Love (2021) reveals how fragile relationships become under the unforgiving weight of the UK immigration system. In The Last Harvest (2025),Nuno Boaventura Miranda offers an intergenerational portrait of a Cape Verdean community and diaspora living in Lisbon as they grapple with questions of identity and a shared longing for connection. Finally, We Were the Scenery (2025), a creative collaboration between director Christopher Radcliff and writer Cathy Linh Che, centers on two refugees who escaped the Vietnam War only to be cast as background extras in a reenactment of the same war. Still, time moves forward; new lives are pieced together in community, and resilience endures, with a quiet and stubborn perseverance in search of a better life.
