Cover A scene from ‘We Dare to Dream’, one of the films featured in UNHCR’s 3rd Refugee Film Festival
A scene from ‘We Dare to Dream’, one of the films featured in UNHCR’s 3rd Refugee Film Festival
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UNHCR’s 3rd Refugee Film Festival and Short Film Competition distils vast crises into personal stories worth sitting for
Somewhere between a Syrian chocolatier in Nova Scotia and a South Sudanese swimmer training under the Olympic flag, a question settles in: What does home feel like when the ground you knew has disappeared?
On June 21, 2025, a Saturday, Abbot Lopez Hall at San Beda University in Manila will dim its lights for the 3rd Refugee Film Festival and Short Film Competition, a one-day gathering that marks World Refugee Day with stories that ask just that. It’s organised by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, alongside a constellation of partners: the Department of Justice–Refugees and Stateless Persons Protection Unit, Pathways Pilipinas, San Beda University and Uniqlo.
Admission is free, which feels symbolically apt: empathy, like popcorn, should never come at a premium.
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Above A moving documentary spotlighting the inspiring journeys of refugee athletes striving for excellence and dignity on the world stage (Photo: courtesy of UNHCR)
A moving documentary spotlighting the inspiring journeys of refugee athletes striving for excellence and dignity on the world stage (Photo: courtesy of UNHCR)
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At 1pm, the festival opens with We Dare to Dream, Waad Al-Kateab’s documentary chronicling the lives of five refugee athletes training for the Olympic Games. They are from Iran, Syria, South Sudan, Cameroon—countries where the idea of sport as salvation seems both poetic and faintly absurd. But there they are, running laps and chasing medals under a flag that reads simply: “Refugee Olympic Team.” The film, which spans continents and crises, finds its rhythm in quiet discipline: early morning swims, visa interviews, video calls with families left behind. It’s a film about breath—how to hold it, how to find it again.
Above A heartwarming feature film recounting the story of a Syrian refugee family rebuilding their lives in Canada through a thriving chocolate business (Photo: courtesy of UNHCR)
A heartwarming feature film recounting the story of a Syrian refugee family rebuilding their lives in Canada through a thriving chocolate business (Photo: courtesy of UNHCR)
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Next, at 3.20pm, the screen shifts from stadiums to small-town storefronts with Peace by Chocolate, a Canadian dramedy based on the true story of the Hadhad family. After their chocolate factory is bombed in Syria, they resettle in Nova Scotia and begin again, one truffle at a time. It’s part entrepreneurial manual, part generational drama: a son torn between pursuing medicine and continuing the family business; a community learning, slowly, what welcome looks like. The title might scan as twee, but the message lands with unexpected weight: resilience isn’t always loud.
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Above The 3rd Refugee Film Festival Short Film Competition invites interested young people in the Philippines to create and submit short film entries that reflect the theme “Strengthening Spaces of Resilience and Hope” (Photo: courtesy of UNHCR)
The 3rd Refugee Film Festival Short Film Competition invites interested young people in the Philippines to create and submit short film entries that reflect the theme “Strengthening Spaces of Resilience and Hope” (Photo: courtesy of UNHCR)
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The final portion of the festival, from 5.40pm to 7.00pm, belongs to the Short Film Competition, featuring works by young filmmakers from across the Philippines. The theme: “Strengthening Spaces of Resilience and Hope.” A theme that might once have sounded like a donor-funded slogan, but here—on a university campus, in a city that knows its own kinds of displacement—it feels sharper and more grounded. These films, five in total, come with the blush of urgency. Many of their makers grew up closer to migration than to movie sets.
If you’re wondering what World Refugee Day is or why it matters, that’s sort of the point. Established in 2001 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, it’s a date meant to honour the 122 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. But “honour” can be a tricky verb—it leans toward ceremony, not necessarily change. This is where film comes in. The images don’t solve displacement, but they ask you to sit with it for 89 minutes.
And if the seating is a little stiff or the air-con too strong, all the better. Empathy, like good cinema, works best when slightly uncomfortable.
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Angela Nicole Regis Guiral is the assistant digital editor of Tatler Philippines. She studied journalism and has since written features that look closely at how culture, lifestyle and social impact converge, while occasionally wandering into the worlds of style and travel.
