Announcing Home Is Distant Shores Film Festival 2025!
12 PM Noon, May 3rd 2025
The Cary Theater, Cary, North Carolina.
In its 5th year, the Home Is Distant Shores Film Festival celebrates the lives and experiences of immigrants and refugees who have embarked on journeys to new lands, showcasing their compelling stories through captivating films and artwork. This year, we’ve two film blocks will immerse audiences in a variety of engaging narratives, each culminating in Q&A sessions with filmmakers and community members. Join us for a transformative experience and secure your tickets today!
TICKET SALES - COMING SOON!
Event Program
Our selected films will be announced soon!
Some of our past selections
Dallas is home to over 100,000 refugees, where more than half come to Vickery Meadow nicknamed a "Mini United Nations". In Vickery Meadow lies Heart House, an after-school program for refugee children specializing in Social Emotional Learning (SEL). "The Heart of Texas" provides an outline of the child refugee crisis, and how Heart House provides impactful support to refugee children.
The Covid-19 pandemic has left no life untouched. "Migrant Lives in Pandemic Times" presents a collection of personal testimony to explore how the everyday realities of migrants from across the globe have changed during the pandemic. From a Senegalese street seller in Bilbao/Spain, to a Syrian gig worker in Toronto/Canada and a Senegalese human rights activist in Berlin/ Germany, the stories give voice to those missing in public debate. They also reveal insights into universal conditions and challenges in terms of work, economical uncertainty, freedom of movement, mental health, activism and the importance of communities - linking us as human beings beyond our specific cultural backgrounds.
Based on a true story of an Asian Indian immigrant couple whose lives are shattered by an unexpected hate crime in Olathe, Kansas fueled by anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric after the 2016 election.
"Libertad" is an intimate portrait of political refugees from Venezuela, their resilience and love for one another, and their lived experiences of abduction, torture and oppression.
Pipi Thay Too (The Grandmother Tree) is a short animated film celebrating resilience, the power of identity, mystical encounters with ancestors, and the Karen and Karenni refugee experience.
On September 20th 2021, a nomadic Tibetan girl, Geru Tsomao, travelled around 1,700km from Qinghai province, part of what is called the planet’s ‘third pole’ to Beijing for cleft palate and lip surgeries. At that time, no one could possibly know how this journey would change her life forever.
Lily Cruz, a DACA recipient, travels on a medical volunteer mission and upon returning to the USA a TSA agent isn’t so welcoming.
Ma's Kitchen is a semi-autobiographical short film (which will become a feature film) about Debbie Vu, her mother, their language barrier and straddling between two very different cultures, Vietnamese and American.
Recollections of people who travelled to Britain from all over the world, and found a home within an artistic community at The Questors Theatre in Ealing, west London. This film was the culmination of a lengthy series of interviews originally conducted and transcribed by members of the theatre's PlayBack team. The contributors were then encouraged to share their memories on camera, and their stories were fascinating.
We are interested in wide variety of stories such as migration journey, border security, education, employment, documented and undocumented immigration, community integration, family separation, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), resettlement of refugee and asylum seekers etc. We encourage various storytellers to share their work with almost 800,000 immigrants who reside in North Carolina state and beyond.