Best movies like Welcome

When five Kurdish prisoners are granted one week's home leave, they find to their dismay that they face continued oppression outside of prison from their families, the culture, and the government.

It sometimes takes little to spoil a weekend in the country. A simple misunderstanding in a supermarket parking lot, a bad reaction, and there you go, everything is awry. Nothing is going well for Christine. Jean leaves her. Her oldest friends, Sylvette and Ulrich, are no longer such good friends. Everything is falling apart at the seams. But life is always full of surprises.

Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

During the summer of 1955, seventeen-year-old Eric Hansen embarks on a journey in his new town, a journey which will change his life forever.

After decades of laboring as a Glasgow shipbuilder, Frank Redmond, a no-nonsense 55-year-old working-class man, suddenly finds himself laid off. For the first time in his life, he is without a job or a sense of direction, and he's too proud to ask for guidance. His best mates - rascally Danny, timid Norman and cynical Eddie - are there for him, but Frank still feels desperately alone. An offhand remark from Danny inspires Frank to challenge himself. Already contemplating the state of his relationships with loving wife Joan and all-but-estranged son Rob, Frank is determined to shore up his own self-confidence. He will attempt the near impossible - swimming the English Channel.

In a village in eastern Turkey, tales of the economic success of Turks in Switzerland inspire Haydar to convince his wife Meryem that they must go. He sells their livestock and small plot of land in exchange for passage for two. He wants to leave their seven children in the care of the eldest and his parents; his father advises him to take one son to be educated in Europe, as economic insurance. The three set off for Istanbul, Milan, and Switzerland, stowing away on a ship. At Lake Como, they pay the rest of their money to unprincipled men who abandon them at an Alpine pass before a blizzard. Father and son are separated from Meryem. Will anyone reach the land of promise?

This is a documentary film chronicling the brutal Honour Killing of Banaz Mahmod, a young British Kurdish woman in London, killed by her own family for choosing a life for herself.

After reuniting with his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, a family tragedy causes Binh to flee from Viet Nam to America. Landing in New York, Binh begins a road trip to Texas, where his American father is said to live.

When 15-year-old Matt Freeman gets his girlfriend, Francesca, pregnant, her family decides to put the unborn baby up for adoption. Matt agrees to the decision, but begins to rethink it. This movie is taken from the father's point of view.

A young, white school teacher is assigned to Yamacraw Island, an isolated fishing community off the coast of South Carolina, populated mostly by poor black families. He finds that the basically illiterate, neglected children there know so little of the world outside their island.

Immigrants from around the world enter Los Angeles every day, with hopeful visions of a better life, but little notion of what that life may cost. Their desperate scenarios test the humanity of immigration enforcement officers. In Crossing Over, writer-director Wayne Kramer explores the allure of the American dream, and the reality that immigrants find – and create -- in 21st century L.A.

Three people who have lost everything, a soldier tired of fighting, a young woman and a little girl, pose as a family to escape the civil war in Sri Lanka. They emigrate to France and settle in a chaotic neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris, where apparently the law no longer exists; but they, who barely know each other, struggle to survive there, even when the ghosts of war begin to haunt them again.

Drifting through his gap year with its internships and travel plans, Jack has always suspected there was more to life than this. A chance encounter with the beautiful and ethereal Evelyn swerves his life radically off course.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

Two teenagers, both newcomers to London, forge an unlikely friendship over the course of a hot summer. Tomo (Thomas Turgoose) is a runaway from Nottingham; Marek (Piotr Jagiello) lives in the district of Somers Town, between King's Cross and Euston stations, where his dad is working on a new rail link.

After growing up in Switzerland, 13-year-old Marta returns to a city in southern Italy with her mother and older sister. Independent and inquisitive, she joins a catechism class at a local church. However, the games and religious pop songs she encounters there do not nearly satisfy her interest in faith. Struggling to find her place, Marta pushes the boundaries of the class, the priest, and the church.

An IRA gunman on the run from the government meets an idealistic young woman and attempts to win her support for his cause.

An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

Marcel Marx, a former bohemian and struggling author, has given up his literary ambitions and relocated to the port city Le Havre. He leads a simple life based around his wife Arletty, his favourite bar and his not too profitable profession as a shoeshiner. As Arletty suddenly becomes seriously ill, Marcel's path crosses with an underage illegal immigrant from Africa, who needs Marcel's help to hide from the police.

Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.

Pakistani taxi-driver Parvez and prostitute Bettina find themselves trapped in the middle when Islamic fundamentalists decide to clean up their local town.

When an aging matriarch starts showing signs of dementia, her dysfunctional family in Istanbul must navigate a minefield of unresolved issues to care for her.

Introduced to a volunteer opportunity with the Doctor's Gift Program, Katie (Mika Boorem) signs up for a trip to China, where she meets Lin (Yi Ding), a girl with whom she shares a birthday. Lin has a facial deformity that discourages her from ever showing her face, but her friendship with Katie helps her start to see life in a new way.

Bertrand dutifully visits his terminally ill wife every day, braving the long train and bus ride to and from the hospital. Lorraine not so willingly visits her boyfriend who was diagnosed with colon cancer. They bump into each other during one of their visits and begin to meet for coffee. Coffee turns into Lorraine offering to drive Bertrand to the train station and the two turn to each other in their time of grief and confusion.

Mamo, an old and legendary Kurdish musician living in Iran, plans to give one final concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. After seven months of trying to get a permit and rounding up his ten sons, he sets out for the long and troublesome journey in a derelict bus, denying a recurring vision of his own death at half moon. Halfway the party halts at a small village to pick up female singer Hesho, which will only add to the difficulty of the undertaking, as it is forbidden for Iranian women to sing in public, let alone in the company of men. But Mamo is determined to carry through, if not for the gullible antics of the bus driver.

Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her.

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

An opus in three parts, Iraq In Fragments offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied. American director James Longley spent more than two years filming in Iraq to create this stunningly photographed, poetically rendered documentary of the war-torn country as seen through the eyes of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

A rebellious teenager forced to repeat her last year of high school is caught between adolescence and adulthood - and between two very different male admirers.

Claire and Stéphane are two Lyon-based judges who could hardly be more different. She is young and enthusiastic, committed to helping those unfortunates who find themselves in debt. He is older, wiser, but disillusioned with his work and his life. Under Claire’s influence, Stéphane discovers a new lease of life and at last finds a cause that is worth fighting for...

The lives and turbulent adventures of a bunch of fourteen-year-old teenagers, through the eyes of three young girls - Sarah, Jade and Louise - with one last year to go before high school.

A Sicilian family deals with the arrival of a group of immigrants on their island.

Nadia is in her late 30s and begins a serious relationship with a teen named Pierre.

Tania, a young Russian woman who lives illegally in Belgium with her 13-year-old son Ivan. Constantly on her guard, she dreads police checks until the day she is arrested.

In a rural school in the middle of the mountains, a girl who is starting to become a woman feels the profound need to discover her true identity. She does not know who her father is and she is determined to find him, but her mother does not approve it. The hostility of winter in such a harsh place turns this desire into a real threat: freezing in the middle of nowhere. Going behind the backs of the school authorities and the girl's mother, her teacher decides to help her. They set off on this quest for truth, but it is not going to be an easy journey... Their only clue is a small, rusty plate.

When a planeload of Pakistani orphans are shipped to his state for permanent relocation, the governor of Idaho defies the president and closes the state's border. News Net Television, a cable news program that makes hay by reporting on political scandals, quickly spins the racist act into an overnight media sensation, creating a divide in national opinion over the issue.

Bess, a lonely, trailer park teen, steals a car and makes a desperate journey from Kansas to Vegas in search of a father she never knew. Her trip takes her deep into the seedy underbelly of America where she encounters an array of lost-souls, deadbeats and con men, and learns that family can be found in the oddest of places.

The life of a Northern Italian middle-class family is turned upside down after their 12-year-old son falls overboard during a sea trip, only to be picked up by a boat of illegal immigrants.

A bittersweet coming-of-age film, Foreign Letters is itself a love letter to the unshakeable bond between friends. Set in the pre-email era of the 1980s, young Ellie, newly arrived to the US from Israel, anxiously waits for letters from her best friend back home. Suffering from homesickness, language difficulties and rejection at school, life brightens when she meets Thuy, a Vietnamese refugee her age. As the two bond and become inseparable, they eventually hurt each other, and Ellie must find a way to restore their trust. Based on director Ela Thier's personal immigration experience, Foreign Letters is a film about poverty, prejudice, shame, and the healing power of friendship.

In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so called “green border” between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life, Jan, a young border guard, and a Syrian family intertwine.

At thirteen-years-old, with an unusually high IQ and a knack for observing things about other people, Lou Bertignac is not only the youngest in her class at school; she is also the most unusual. Painfully shy, she has few friends, save for Lucas, whose company helps her get through each day. At home, Lou's life is also difficult: Her mother hasn't left the house in years and her father spends his days crying in the bathroom. Lou's world is dark and sad... That is, until she meets No.

A troubled young woman is thrown out of a convent and forms a relationship with a radical Muslim.

Out on the lacrosse pitch, wealthy but troubled Jesse and poor but driven Tosha form an easy and deep bond, but their relationship is threatened once they enter the hallways of an elite prep school they attend in Washington, D.C. There, they must work to overcome racial and other tensions in their classmates, and in themselves, if they hope to keep their friendship alive.

David, a professor of dermatology, has been treating 13-year-old Romain since he was a baby. Afflicted with a rare skin condition, Romain must avoid sunlight and is condemned to live in the shade. David and Romain have become the closest of friends and nothing can separate them. But then David learns that he is about to be transferred to another clinic in another town. How will he be able to break the news to Romain? And how will Romain cope with this new crisis in his life?

A willful young boy follows his just as obstinate grandmother in a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.

In Paris' cosmopolitan and colorful 10th arrondissement, Philippe, who's fresh out of prison, crosses paths with Avdal, a Kurd who is trying to track down an Iraqi war criminal. Avdal, who dreams of staying in France, plans to bring his fiancee Siba to Paris. She's due to arrive in the next few days. The two men strike up a friendship and when Avdal dies suddenly and unexpectedly, Philippe finds himself left to organize the funeral arrangements. What should he do with the body? Siba arrives in Paris, and soon learns that Avdal has died. She is taken in by a group of Kurdish men and before long she also meets Philippe - all of whom are quite smitten by her beauty. Meanwhile, Avdal's father Cheto, a devout Muslim, comes to Paris to grieve for his son. He intends to force Siba to return to her homeland, but the young woman has now had a taste of freedom.

Ash is a man torn between two worlds, that of his family and friends and the other, of his dreams. This is his story set across London with it's fast paced nightlife and run ins with the law all caught on camera from the Director of Kidulthood.

Centers on a group of weary Middle Eastern refugees who have made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas.

This is a love story set in the steppes of Central Asia of today. Temür a thirty year old Kazakh decides to start life again in his ancestral village in the Kyrghyz Mountains. He discovers soon after his arrival that he is a misfit in this settlement of old conservative Islamic men,some women and children. The only ray of hope for him is Amira a young married woman who waits in frustration for her absentee husband - a Mujahideen. Temur watches sorrowfully as the individual village stories unfold at the same as he tries to help the community out in any way he can. In this way he comes closer to Amira and Taib, her young brother-in-law. In a dead end situation the lovers decide to leave the settlement and travel to a place that would hold out with their dreams. Written by Mira Tanna-Händel