RSS

Category Archives: Migrant workers

SHAME AND MONEY

07 Feb

2026; 2h 9m
Director: Visar Morina
Writers: Doruntina BashaVisar Morina
Stars: Astrit Kabashi, Flonja Kodheli, Fiona Gllavica

A proud family man struggles to provide as financial pressures mount. Though his mother and brother-in-law offer help, accepting support wounds his dignity. As stability slips away, he faces tough choices about pride versus survival.

“After losing their livelihood in a village, a Kosovar family is forced to move to the capital in pursuit of a place in a hypercapitalist society.  Shame and Money is a finely crafted portrait of hardworking people striving for a decent life while navigating relentless pressures and chronic instability. Shaban, a traditional head of the household, wants to be the provider, yet his mother’s savings keep the family afloat, and accepting help from a wealthy brother-in-law comes with additional challenges. With his pride steadily bruised and dignity slipping out of reach, Shaban drifts closer to an unseen edge — raising the question of how much more he can possibly endure.”

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 7, 2026 in 2026 Shortlist, A: New/Just Added, Drama, Migrant workers

 

FAR FROM HOME (Dar Ghorbat)

01 Feb

1975; 1h 31m

This drama explores the grim lives of Turkish “guest workers” living in Germany.

Director: Sohrab Shahid Saless
Writers: Helga Houzer; Sohrab Shahid Saless
Stars: Parviz Sayyad; Cihan Anasai; Muhammet Temizkan

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 1, 2026 in 2026 Shortlist, A: New/Just Added, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Drama, Global Economy, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Temp/Precarious work

 

TRAIN DREAMS

29 Jan

2025; PG-13; 1h 42m

Based on Denis Johnson’s beloved novella, Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century.

Director: Clint Bentley
Writers: Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Denis Johnson
Stars: Joel Edgerton, Clifton Collins Jr., Felicity Jones

NYTimes: ‘Train Dreams’ Review: Life, Understood in Reverse

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 29, 2026 in 2026 Shortlist, A: New/Just Added, Drama, Migrant workers, Self-Employed/Freelance, Temp/Precarious work

 

Working Class Heroes (2022) Original title: Heroji radnicke klase

04 Jan

1h 25m
A group of illegal construction workers, left without money and basic rights, fight their bosses with all they have left, building a hoax “Potemkin’s village” to con a development fund. Close to deadline it’s a fight for life and death.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 4, 2025 in A: New/Just Added, Cities-Urban, Class, Comedy, Construction Trades, Drama, Migrant workers, Working Class

 

Room Without A View (2021)

04 Jan

1h 13m
The film is a kaleidoscopic gaze on the exploitative working conditions experienced by migrant domestic workers hired under the Kafala system in Lebanon. Meagre wages, manipulation and a room without windows. Lebanon’s countless maids fight back against the mechanisms of modern slavery.

Director: Roser Corella

www.rosercorella.com

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 4, 2025 in A: New/Just Added, Documentary, Global Economy, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Service Workers, Women, Working Class

 

R.M.N. (2022)

04 Jan

  Unrated; 2h 5m

Romanian New Wave auteur Cristian Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days”) returns to masterful form with this drama, set in the filmmaker’s homeland and focusing on Matthias (Marin Grigore), a man who returns to his small village after walking off his slaughterhouse job in Germany, only to find the townspeople roiled by the presence of foreign workers. Ann Hornaday writes: “So much fear and misplaced anger are at play in Matthias’s increasingly hysterical behavior that ‘R.M.N.’ might as well be an X-ray of contemporary America.” (PG-13, 106 minutes.)

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 4, 2025 in 2026 Shortlist, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Working Class

 

Between Two Worlds (2021) (Ouistreham)

04 Jan

Based on French journalist Florence Aubenas’s bestselling non-fiction work Le Quai de Ouistreham, investigating rising precarity in French society through her experiences in the northern port city of Caen.

‘Between Two Worlds’ Review: Juliette Binoche Goes Undercover

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 4, 2025 in A: New/Just Added, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Drama, Global Economy, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Service Workers, Women, Working Class

 

Bitter Money

05 Oct

2016 ‧ Documentary ‧ 2h 43m

Migrants come to the city of East China looking for a better life, but instead find few opportunities and poor living conditions that create violence and oppression.

Initial release: September 9, 2016
Director: Wang Bing
Screenplay: Wang Bing
Cast: Ling Ling, Huang Lei
Awards: Orizzonti Award for Best Screenplay
Nominations: Orizzonti Award for Best Actor, Orizzonti Award for Best Actress

‘Bitter Money’ and ‘Bitter Rice’: Migrant Workers Face Toil and Trouble

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 5, 2019 in A: New/Just Added, Cities-Urban, Communism/Socialism, Documentary, Farm & Food, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

23 Dec

R | 1h 51min | Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi | 13 July 2018 (USA)
Director: Boots Riley
Writer: Boots Riley
Stars: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler
website

NYT article here
“Sorry to Bother You” comes out in wide release in July 2018. The film is visually ingenious and funny, yet grounded by pointed arguments about the obstacles to black success in America, the power of strikes and the soul-draining predations of capitalism.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on December 23, 2018 in Comedy, Communism/Socialism, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Organizing, Romance, SciFi, Service Workers, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Temp/Precarious work

 

From the Land of Gandhi

07 Mar

2019; 49min

Director: Prakash Wadhwa
prakash.wadhwa@gmail.com

A story of 4 high-skilled immigrants from India, a decade after they came to study in the United States, which places a human face to high-skilled immigration. The film also highlights the need for reforming America’s legal immigration at a time of intense globalization and retirement of the baby boomers.

Genres Documentary, Special Interest
Director Prakash Wadhwa
Starring Richard B. Freeman, Vivek Wadhwa, Jacob Kirkegaard

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on March 7, 2018 in Available Online, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 
← Older posts