During Mozambique’s brutal 15 year civil war, one and
 a half million Mozambicans fled to seek refuge in
 neighbouring countries. There was no time to bid
 farewell, no time to pay the proper respects to the dead.
 In 1984, when the war reached the province of Tete,
 Alexandre Ferrao was chosen by his uncles to take his
 family and flee to Malawi. Nine years later, with the war
 finally over, Alexandre decided it was time to return
 home to seek atonement under the forefathers’ tree.
 Licinio Azevedo’s award-winning documentary is the
 moving story of the family’s three week journey home -
 by ox-cart, by bus, but mostly on foot - with extracts from
 Alexandre’s daily dairy of life in exile providing a
 running commentary.

 A magical love story between two adolescents in the
 Gaza Strip, Michel Khleifi’s bewitching drama is set in

 

 the last, turbulent days of Israeli occupation. Yusef is a
 12-year-old Palestinian refugee who lives with his
 mother and 15-year-old sister. He becomes infatuated
 with Aida, a beautiful wild girl his own age - and says he
 will marry her when he grows up. But she replies she
 will only marry the suitor who recovers three jewels
 missing from her grandmother’s necklace. By
 deliberately setting out to show that not all Gaza’s
 youngsters conformed to the stone-throwing stereotypes
 of the Intifada perpetuated by the mass media, Khleifi’s
 film asks what kind of a future can there be for any
 society that denies its children their right to a childhood?

 Years of economic and political chaos in Haiti, the
 Caribbean’s poorest country, have led to environmental
 devastation, crusting poverty and the mass exodus of
 Haitians trying to reach the mecca of the United States.
 Haitian director Raoul Peck’s evocative documentary
 takes the form of journey through Haiti. Guiding the
 viewer along the way is the narrator - a fictional, wise
 old countryman who draws on his ancestral knowledge
 of life and death to provide a running commentary on
 the plight of the real life Haitians he encounters on his
 travels. "I wanted to show people who fight and do not
 give up," says Peck. "One wonders what the destiny of
 such people could have been had they been given
 some minimum knowledge, education or income?"