Films about refugees

Films about refugees
List of the best films about refugees, selected by visitors to our site: Sin Nombre, Birds Are Singing in Kigali, The Marksman, All Saints, The Good Lie, Stromboli, Saint Judy, Arch of Triumph, Mysterious Skin, Miral.

In the top there are new films of 2021, a plot description and trailers for films that have already been released.

Genre
Country
Markimdb: 7.6
Genrethriller, drama, adventure, crime
CountryMexico
Duration01:36

Set on the border, where Mexico becomes the crucible and the fearsome gangs of today’s Mexican countryside, the gauntlet, to freedom. The stories of a girl living in Honduras and hungering for a brighter future, and two teen gang members, for whom the Mara Salvatrucha is near their entire universe, become interlaced on the train to the border, a journey that will determine the future of their lives

Markimdb: 5.6
Genredrama
CountryPoland

We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.

Markimdb: 5.6
Genreaction, thriller, crime
CountryUSA

Jim Hanson’s quiet life is suddenly disturbed by two people crossing the US/Mexico border – a woman and her young son – desperate to flee a Mexican cartel. After a shootout leaves the mother dead, Jim becomes the boy’s reluctant defender. He embraces his role as Miguel’s protector and will stop at nothing to get him to safety, as they go on the run from the relentless assassins.

Markimdb: 6.1
Genredrama
CountryUSA
Duration02:21

ALL SAINTS is based on the inspiring true story of salesman-turned-pastor Michael Spurlock (John Corbett), the tiny church he was ordered to shut down, and a group of refugees from Southeast Asia. Together, they risked everything to plant seeds for a future that might just save them all.

Markimdb: 7.4
Genredrama, biography
CountryKenya, India, USA, Canada, South Africa
Duration01:50

A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama
CountryItaly, USA
Duration01:41

After the end of World War II Karen, a young displaced woman from Lithuania, marries Italian fisherman Antonio to get away from her internment camp. But the life on Antonio's island, Stromboli, threatened by its volcano, is a tough one and Karen cannot get used to it.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genredrama, biography
CountryUSA

The true story of immigration attorney Judy Wood and how she singlehandedly changed the U.S. law of asylum to save women's lives.

Markimdb: 6.3
Genremelodrama, drama, military
CountryUSA
Duration02:13

In winter of 1938, Paris is crowded with refugees from the Nazis, who live in the black shadows of night, trying to evade deportation. One such is Dr. Ravic, who practices medicine illegally and stalks his old Nazi enemy Haake with murder in mind. One rainy night, Ravic meets Joan Madou, a kept woman cast adrift by her lover's sudden death. Against Ravic's better judgement, they become involved in a doomed affair.

Markimdb: 7.6
Genredrama
CountryUSA, Netherlands
Duration01:47

    A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.

    Markimdb: 6.3
    Genredrama, history
    CountryFrance, Israel, Italy, India, USA
    Duration01:52

    A drama centered on an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war who finds herself drawn into the conflict.

    Markimdb: 8.3
    Genredocumentary
    CountryUSA
    Duration01:30

    A thought-provoking documentary on the current and historical causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. political involvement.

    Markimdb: 8.3
    Genredrama, crime
    CountryUSA
    Duration02:50

    After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami. Viciously murdering anyone who stands in his way, Tony eventually becomes the biggest drug lord in the state, controlling nearly all the cocaine that comes through Miami. But increased pressure from the police, wars with Colombian drug cartels and his own drug-fueled paranoia serve to fuel the flames of his eventual downfall.

    Markimdb: 6.2
    Genremelodrama, drama, military, history
    CountryChina, Japan, South Korea, USA
    Duration02:08

    During the Chinese Revolution in 1949, three couples flee from China to an island of Taiwan.

    Markimdb: 7
    Genredrama, family, history
    CountryGermany, Luxembourg

    In 1933 in Berlin. Anna is only nine years old when her life changes from the ground up. To escape the Nazis, her father Arthur Kemper, a well-known Jewish journalist, has to flee to Zurich. His family, Anna, her twelve-year-old brother Max and her mother Dorothea, follow him shortly thereafter. Anna has to leave everything behind, including her beloved pink rabbit, and to face a new life full of challenges and privations abroad.

    Markimdb: 5.6
    Genrethriller, history
    CountryUnited Kingdom, Poland
    Duration01:56

    An ambitious young journalist uncovers the horrific slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers during World War II, a secret kept hidden for far too many years.

    Markimdb: 6.5
    Genrehorror, drama
    CountryUnited Kingdom

    After making a harrowing escape from war-torn South Sudan, a young refugee couple struggle to adjust to their new life in a small English town that has an unspeakable evil lurking beneath the surface.

    Markimdb: 8.3
    Genredrama, military
    CountryUSA
    Duration03:06

    In 1947, four German judges who served on the bench during the Nazi regime face a military tribunal to answer charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood hears evidence and testimony not only from lead defendant Ernst Janning and his defense attorney Hans Rolfe, but also from the widow of a Nazi general, an idealistic U.S. Army captain and reluctant witness Irene Wallner.

    Markimdb: 7.2
    Genredrama, military, biography, history
    CountryGermany

    Four young Jews survive the Third Reich in the middle of Berlin by living so recklessly that they become "invisible."

    Markimdb: 6.4
    Genrethriller, drama
    CountryDenmark

    Denmark, in the near future. One year after a major bomb attack in Copenhagen, political radicalization has intensified and ethnic tensions are increasing. As next year's parliamentary elections approach, in which nationalist leader Martin Nordahl hopes for a landslide victory, Zakaria becomes involved in a radical organization, where he befriends Ali.

    Markimdb: 7.5
    Genrecomedy, melodrama
    CountryUSA
    Duration01:40

    Amateur plumber Cluny Brown gets sent off by her uncle to work as a servant at an English country estate..

    Markimdb: 7.6
    Genredocumentary
    CountryEgypt

    Like many young people around the world, best friends Fawzi and Mahmoud are obsessed with soccer. But for the past several years, the teenagers have been stuck in Zaatari, the world’s largest camp for Syrian refugees, located in Jordan. With uncertain legal status and an interrupted education, their prospects are limited. On the local soccer pitch, however, they can imagine a brighter future as professional athletes, a path to escaping the camp and providing for their families. When scouts from a world-renowned Qatari sports academy visit Zaatari, Fawzi and Mahmoud believe they might be able to realize their dreams—if given the opportunity.

    Markimdb: 6.7
    Genreaction, melodrama, drama, military
    CountryUSA
    Duration01:42

    Jim Gordon commands a unit of the famed Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group which fought the Japanese in China before America's entry into World War II. Gordon must send his outnumbered band of fighter pilots out against overwhelming odds while juggling the disparate personalities and problems of his fellow flyers.

    Markimdb: 6.6
    Genredrama
    CountryAustralia

    A shell-shocked photojournalist, haunted by what he has witnessed on assignment in Africa, returns home on the eve of becoming a father. When one of his photographs threatens to destroy a Sudanese refugee's new life, the two men are reunited by nightmare events from the past.

    Markimdb: 7.4
    Genreaction, drama, military
    CountryUSA
    Duration01:24

    A ragtag group of American stragglers battles against superior Communist troops in an abandoned Buddhist temple during the Korean War.

    Markimdb: 6.9
    Genredrama
    CountryIceland, Sweden, Belgium

    At the edge of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula, two women’s lives will intersect – for a brief moment – while trapped in circumstances unforeseen. Between a struggling Icelandic mother and an asylum seeker from Guinea-Bissau, a delicate bond will form as both strategize to get their lives back on track.

    Markimdb: 6
    Genremelodrama, drama
    CountryUnited Kingdom, USA
    Duration01:55

    Superficial people are revealed and drastically changed by circumstance or luck in this a tale of death, seduction, blackmail and theft among British and Americans in Florence in the turbulent days just before World War II.

    Markimdb: 5.7
    Genrecomedy
    CountryFrance
    Duration01:52

    French border cop José Fernandez has just one last extradition to do before his long-awaited promotion to the crime bureau. But his detainee Akim, victim of a judiciary glitch, is outraged to find himself saddled with the identity of a potential terrorist and put on a flight back to Kabul, where he has never even set foot before! What starts as a routine trip for Fernandez and his skirt-chasing partner Guy goes haywire when their plane is grounded in Malta, forcing them to bunk up with Akim, who will stop at nothing to avoid extradition!

    Markimdb: 6
    Genrecomedy, drama
    CountryNorway
    Duration01:43

    A couple decide to open a home for refuges in the remote cold mountains of Norway.

    Markimdb: 6.6
    Genrethriller, drama, history
    CountryCanada
    Duration02:27

    Sudan, East Africa, 1980. A team of Israeli Mossad agents plans to rescue and transfer thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. To do so, and to avoid raising suspicions from the inquisitive and ruthless authorities, they establish as a cover a fake diving resort by the Red Sea.

    Markimdb: 6.6
    Genrethriller, drama, adventure, military
    CountryUnited Kingdom, Israel, France

    Beirut, 1982: a young Palestinian refugee and an Israeli fighter pilot form a tentative bond in their attempt to make their way across war-torn Lebanon back to their home.

    Markimdb: 6
    Genremelodrama, drama
    CountryUnited Kingdom

    Kit can’t remember much of his native Vietnam. When he returns to the Land of the Golden Star for the first time in over thirty years, he takes in his local surroundings as any Western tourist would, and the environment is as exotic as the language is incomprehensible. The aim of Kit’s travels – to find a place to scatter his parents’ ashes – thus becomes part of a journey back to his roots and to the discovery of his identity, which external circumstances have rendered ambiguous and complex.

    Markimdb: 7.3
    Genredrama, military
    CountryPoland, Germany, Canada
    Duration02:25

    A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (formerly Poland).

    Markimdb: 7.5
    Genredrama
    CountryFrance
    Duration01:50

    Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais

    Markimdb: 6.1
    Genredrama
    CountryCanada

    Follows a Serbian refugees mother and daughter, as they struggle to navigate the many obstacles facing newcomers to Canada.

    Markimdb: 6.8
    Genremelodrama, drama, military
    CountryUnited Kingdom, Spain, Germany
    Duration02:07

    A Glasgow man visits war-torn Nicaragua with a refugee tormented by her memories.

    Markimdb: 6.4
    Genremelodrama, drama
    CountryNew Zealand
    Duration01:32

    Ivan is the fierce patriarch of a family of Croatian refugees in Auckland. Nina is his daughter, ready to live on her own, despite his angry objections. Eddie is the Maori she takes as her lover. Nina works at a restaurant where Eddie cooks. For a price, she agrees to marry a Chinese, another restaurant employee, so that he (and his Chinese wife) can establish permanent residency. The money gives her the independence she needs to leave her parents' house and move in with Eddie. Complications arise when Eddie realizes the depth of her father's fury and the strength of Nina's family ties.

    Markimdb: 6
    Genrefantastic, thriller, fantasy, drama, detective
    CountryHungary, Germany, France
    Duration02:02

    A young immigrant is shot down while illegally crossing the border. Terrified and in shock, wounded Aryan can now mysteriously levitate at will. Thrown into a refugee camp, he is smuggled out by Dr Stern, intent on exploiting his extraordinary secret. Pursued by enraged camp director Laszlo, the fugitives remain on the move in search of safety and money. Inspired by Aryan's amazing powers, Stern takes a leap of faith in a world where miracles are trafficked for small change...

    Markimdb: 6.6
    Genrecomedy, drama
    CountryFrance, Austria, Germany
    Duration01:44

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

    Markimdb: 7.2
    Genredrama
    CountryUnited Kingdom

    An offbeat observation of refugees waiting to be granted asylum on a fictional remote Scottish island. It focuses on Omar, a young Syrian musician who is burdened by the weight of his grandfather’s oud, which he has carried all the way from his homeland.

    Markimdb: 7.6
    Genreaction, drama
    CountryIndia
    Duration02:38

    Sivaji is a young kid from Sri Lanka who's family consisting of a mother and brother Ashok is uprooted from their community in Sri Lanka ends up in Vizag, Andhra Pradesh. There they are unjustly forced into work by a local mob boss named Baji Rao who forces them to work in transportation of illegal goods. Their lives are in constant hell because of the torture and unfair demands Baji Rao puts on them. Finally unable to bear the injustices by Baji Rao, Sivaji rises and turns into Chatrapati filling in the legend of the original Chatrapati who rose up and led the people against the Mughal emperor Aurangazeb and reunites with his mother.

    Markimdb: 5.9
    Genredrama, adventure, detective, military, history
    CountryGermany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, Canada, Turkey, Jordan
    Duration02:19

    In 1915 a man survives the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, but loses his family, speech and faith. One night he learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and goes on a quest to find them.

    Markimdb: 6.9
    Genrefantastic, drama
    CountryGermany, France
    Duration01:46

    In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.

    Markimdb: 7.8
    Genredrama
    CountryFrance, Israel, Belgium, Italy

    In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.

    Markimdb: 6.7
    Genrecomedy, drama, military
    CountryUnited Kingdom
    Duration01:47

    In London, during October 1993, England is playing Holland in the preliminaries of the World Cup. The Bosnian War is at its height, and refugees from the ex-Yugoslavia are arriving. Football rivals, and political adversaries from the Balkans all precipitate conflict and amusing situations. Meanwhile, the lives of four English families are affected in different ways by encounter with the refugees.

    Markimdb: 6.7
    Genredrama
    CountryIsrael, France
    Duration01:26

    In this bittersweet family comedy, shy teenager Libby moves back to Israel to live with her hapless father Shaul, unexpectedly finding herself without a home as war breaks out around them. Shaul devises a creative solution: posing as refugees, they are taken in by a wealthy family in Jerusalem. Finally in a “normal” household, Shaul and Libby begin to build their father-daughter relationship, but their false identities can’t last forever.

    Markimdb: 7.2
    Genrecomedy, drama
    CountryFinland, Germany
    Duration02:15

    A restaurateur befriends a Syrian refugee who has recently arrived in Finland.

    Markimdb: 7.2
    Genrecomedy, drama
    CountryFinland, France, Germany
    Duration01:33

    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.

    Markimdb: 7.5
    Genreaction, drama, military
    CountryRussia
    Duration01:45

    It is August 1941. With the battle line far away in the east, three soldiers who have managed to escape from captivity find it difficult to hide: the territory is occupied by the enemy. The local woods are not safe: you can easily get embogged. Are the villagers loyal? Nobody can say. There is an old man who offers to help them. Is he reliable enough? He may kill them or report them to the local German authorities. Anything may happen, but one of them, the sniper, is his son who is his youngest, his dearest.

    Markimdb: 7.5
    Genremelodrama, drama, military
    CountryGreece, France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Luxembourg
    Duration02:23

    Alexandre, a TV reporter, is working for a few days in a border town, where a lot of refugees from Albania, Turkey and Kurdistan are packed in. Among them, he notices an old man and thinks he is an important Greek politician who disappeared mysteriously a few years ago. Back in Athens, he asks this politician's former wife to come and identify him. A slow and dry meditation about inhumanity of borders.

    Markimdb: 4.7
    Genrefantastic, comedy
    CountryJapan

    In the year 2011 the greatest tectonic disaster in the history of mankind has occurred. As a result of the catastrophic earthquakes North and South America, Eurasia, Africa and Australia have sunken underwater while the Japanese islands remain untouched.




    MoviesList