The Eleven Films About Refugees You Need To See
They're less depressing than the real thing.
Welcome (2009)
For a film that sits next to middle-of-the-road French comedies on the DVD shelf, Philippe Lioret doesn’t pull any punches with this touching but unsentimental tale of an Iraqi Kurdish teenager’s foolhardy attempt to swim the English Channel in order to seek asylum in the UK.
Along with fantastic performances from French great Vincent Lindon and young Firat Ayrvedi, the film provokes with its depiction of the depressing real-life situation in Calais, where homeless refugees are brutalised by police and citizens can actually be arrested and imprisoned for hosting or comforting them. Even more depressingly, Lioret says he actually had to tone things down for the story in order to get the film made.