Tori and LokitaMovies like Tori and Lokita
- Key Features:
- Immigration, Friendship, Social commentary, Refugee experience, Childhood, Poverty, Exploitation, Belgium, Exile, Survival, Drama
- Tone:
- serious, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Socially conscious viewers, Fans of international cinema, Viewers interested in immigration stories, Drama enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Struggle → Resilience
Tori and Lokita

In Belgium today, a young boy and an adolescent girl who have travelled alone from Africa pit their invincible friendship against the difficult conditions of their exile.
Tori and Lokita
A poor young Belgian mother wants her petty thief of a boyfriend to be gainfully employed to raise their newborn child, but he has other ideas.

Two 13-year-old boys spend an idyllic summer together, but their connection is put to the test when they become the subject of speculation at school.

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

The four friends Lukas, Julius, Gino and Sanchez are trying to survive the everyday life in Neukölln, Berlin between drugs, gangs, rap, violence and boredom. Until they are one day making a serious decision with serious consequences because of a dead certain plan.

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

Igor, aged 15, and his father Roger deal in housing and peddling illicit labor in the outlying districts of Liege, Belgium. Scams, lies and swindling rule their lives. When one of his father’s illegal workers gets injured on the job and asks Igor to promise to take care of his wife and baby, Igor finds himself at a crossroad. He wants to keep the promise, but the price would be to betray his father.

15-year-old Rocks fears that she and her little brother Emmanuel will be taken into care and forced apart if anyone finds out that their mother has left them. Against all odds, and with the help of her loyal friends, she evades the authorities and navigates the most defining days of her young life.

Young, impulsive Rosetta lives a hard and stressful life as she struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother. Refusing all charity, she is desperate to maintain a dignified job.

Joris is trying to come to terms with his broken family relationships on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death when he meets the free-spirited, Yad. Also dealing with family issues, Yad has returned home to The Netherlands after living on his own. Joris and Yad spark an instant connection and decide they want to be more than “just friends,” but fear their families could threaten their relationship.

Isa and Marie bond while working in a French sweatshop and soon begin sharing an apartment that Marie is watching for a hospitalized mother and daughter. Marie, hoping to avoid a life of struggle and poverty, takes up with Chriss, a nightclub owner whose most attractive asset is his money. Isa recognizes the ultimate futility of the relationship and tries to keep Marie away from him, but her interference puts their friendship at risk.

Gab has a well-ordered life: a fiancée, a wealthy family. Leïla, who struggles to juggle her studies, odd jobs, and a brother to support, does not allow herself to live her own life... When Gab meets Leïla, it is a clash of worlds, the beginning of a great love story that will collide violently with reality.

Antwerp, Belgium. The lives of four small-time drug dealers spin out of control when they steal a shipment of cocaine, triggering a full out war between an Amsterdam drug lord and a ruthless Colombian cartel.

As he pedals through the streets of Paris to deliver meals, Souleymane recounts his story. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers, but Souleymane is not ready.

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

Three amateur dirt-bike racers each fall in love with a young woman who, with her brother, sells French fries and hotdogs at the races. Everyone is looking for a better life: she wants out of the business and away from her brother; and the motocross racers want to make their marks as professionals in their sport.

Elisabeth and John John are raised in the same city, yet they live light years apart, separated economically, socially and culturally. That is until the day they start in the same high school class.

After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.

In the near future, the southern Italian city of Taranto is surrounded by barbed wire that no one, not even the police, dares to cross. The poorest are left fighting for survival, while gangs compete for the territory. Two thirteen-year-old orphans who grew up together, dream of joining one of the gangs.

Two teenagers, both newcomers to London, forge an unlikely friendship over the course of a hot summer. Tomo is a runaway from Nottingham; Marek lives in the district of Somers Town, between King's Cross and Euston stations, where his dad is working on a new rail link.

In the Mexican-Guatemalan border, young teenage lovers, Sabina and Jovany, both Hondurans, accidentally meet again after some years without seeing each other. She plans to get to the United States and dreams about being a great singer; he commits all the required atrocities to be accepted by the gang: la Mara Salvatrucha. Sabina and Jovany crashed with the most adverse conditions at the border like white slavery, the Mexican and American migratory agents Burrona and Patrick, the brothel matron Doña Lita, Don Nico the Mexican Consul in Tecún Umán, the drug trafficking networks, the army and la Mara Salvatrucha.

André Demester secretly and painfully loves Barbe, his childhood friend, accepting from her the little that she gives him. He leaves home to be a soldier in a war in a far off land. Barbarity, camaraderie and fear turn him into a warrior. As the seasons go by, Barbe, alone and wasting away, waits for the soldiers to return. Will Demester’s boundless love for Barbe save him?

A Texas cop, whose own daughter might have been forced into sexual slavery, joins forces with a Mexican youth to find the boy's sister, who was abducted and forced into prostitution. Meanwhile, a Polish woman who was promised a better life in America also becomes a victim.

A young girl from London moves to Africa with her parents where she befriends a lion cub.

Two teen track stars discover first love as they train for the biggest relay race of their young lives.

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.

In a desperate attempt to reach Europe and crouched before an airstrip in Cameroon, a six-year-old boy and his older sister wait to sneak into the holds of an airplane. Not too far away, an environmental activist contemplates the terrible image of an elephant, dead and fangless. Not only do you have to fight against poaching, but you will also have to meet the problems of your newly arrived daughter from Spain. Thousands of kilometers to the north, in Melilla, a group of civil guards prepare to face the furious crowd of sub-Saharan people who have begun the assault on the fence. Three stories linked by a central theme, in which none of its protagonists know that their destinies are doomed to cross and that their lives will no longer be the same.

Driss and Manuel both grew up on the same council estate. An estate where the sense of belonging to your patch is much stronger than the sense of belonging to a country, a nation or a culture... Manuel has assimilated this belonging, and he has even benefited from it and built his life on it. Driss, meanwhile, has shunned it. They will both have to face up to the consequences of their decisions – because they will each have a price to pay…

A tale of the tender relationship between a twelve-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old upperclassman who is the object of his desire, all set within the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit-run school.

In eastern France, two teenage cousins have the summer of their lives when they paddle a purloined canoe to the far shore of a lake.

Cagalera and Moloteco are two teenagers from San Gregorio Atlapulco who are desperate to get out and move up and away from oppressive circumstances. When they hear of an opportunity to buy a spot in the electrician’s union, which could transform their lives, they quickly devolve into the criminal, adult underworld of Mexico City in a bid to buy their freedom.

At thirteen-years-old, with an unusually high IQ and a knack for observing things about other people, Lou Bertignac is not only the youngest in her class at school; she is also the most unusual. Painfully shy, she has few friends, save for Lucas, whose company helps her get through each day. At home, Lou's life is also difficult: Her mother hasn't left the house in years and her father spends his days crying in the bathroom. Lou's world is dark and sad... That is, until she meets No.

A teen boy living in a small town on the Belgian coast finds his ordinary life take an unexpected turn when a handsome traveler blows through town.

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

Rie is a PR-coordinator visiting a tunnel boring machine to portray the well-oiled European cooperation in the Metro construction when an accident suddenly occurs. Unable to escape, she takes refuge in an airlock with Croatian miner Ivo and Bharan, a worker from Eritrea.

Lorna is a young Albanian woman in a marriage of convenience with Claudy, a heroin addict. Just as Lorna is about to be granted Belgian citizenship, Claudy finds the strength to detox; this presents a problem not only for Lorna, but for the criminal who brokered the deal.

Mirko and Manolo are best friends and live in the suburbs of Rome. They both live in poor conditions with their single parents, are still in school and struggle with occasional odd jobs to make ends meet. Together they share dreams of women, of sex and money, of a better life to come. Then, after killing a man in a hit-and-run one night, they get involved with the local mafia and their lives change dramatically.

Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.

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.

This drama depicts the misery of neglected children in big cities. 13 years old Bruno is of a good family, but since the death of his grandmother he spends most of his time alone, in a phantasy world, while his mother is away at work. But then he befriends the violent Jean-Roger, who's from a severely disturbed family, where nobody cares what he's doing. In school Jean-Roger drives their teacher into despair just for fun. To separate the two boys, she starts to stimulate Bruno's interests by giving him extra lessons. When Jean-Roger fears loosing his one and only friend, he becomes even more aggressive.

Fatima, an Algerian-born woman who now lives in France with her two teenage daughters, with whom she is barely able to communicate.

Longing for a brighter future, two Senegalese teenagers embark on a journey from West Africa to Italy. However, between their dreams and reality lies a labyrinth of checkpoints, the Sahara Desert, and the vast waters of the Mediterranean.

Kamal resolves to change his life for the better, and so leaves Belgium to help victims of the war in Syria. But when he arrives, he is forced to join a militia and is left stranded in Raqqa. Back home, his younger brother Nassim quickly becomes easy prey for radical recruiters, who promise to reunite him with his brother. Their mother, Leila, fights to protect the only thing she has left: her youngest son.

Ten-year-old Hannes, growing up with his young, poor and single mother wants to join the coolest gang in the area, the Vorstadtkrokodile. When the ‘entry test’ goes wrong, Hannes’s life is saved by Kai, who is desperate to join too but is wheelchair bound and unable to even run away when things get hot. Hannes would accept Kai but the other gang members don’t seem happy to accept a handicapped member...

A young South African boy from the Johannesburg ghetto named Tsotsi, meaning Gangster, leaves home as a child to get away from his helpless parents. Now a teenage thug, Tsotsi finds a baby in the back seat of a car he's just stolen. He decides that it is his responsibility to care for the infant and in the process learns that maybe the criminal life isn’t the best way.

Four friends become stranded in Eastern Europe and have to become hit men, prostitutes, corrupt cops, smugglers and more to make it home.

A promising teenage dancer enrolls at a prestigious ballet school while grappling with her gender dysphoria.

The line between reality and fiction starts to blur when two best friends start making a movie about getting revenge on bullies.

Daniel leaves prison. He returns to Marseilles where Mathilda, his daughter, has just given birth. Nicolas, her spouse, a self-employed driver, is exhausted while Mathilda is a sales assistant on a trial basis. But, one night, Nicolas is assaulted by taxi drivers determined to reduce unfair competition.

Samson, a cheeky 15-year-old boy, and Delilah, live in an isolated Aboriginal community in the Central Australian desert. The two teenagers soon discover that life outside the community can be cruel. Lost, unwanted and alone they discover that life isn’t always fair, but love never judges.

Waldemar Nods, a young man from Suriname, meets the older Dutch woman Rika van der Lans and they fall in love. In pre-WWII Netherlands they could not be more different. The one black, the other white, 17 years between them and on top of that Rika already has four children with another man. They love each other, but then Rika appears to be pregnant.

A drama set at a Swiss ski resort and centered on a boy who supports his sister by stealing from wealthy guests.

A brutal home-jacking goes hopelessly wrong. Dave, one of the two robbers, manages to run off, leaving his brother Kenneth behind. Four years later, Kenneth is released from prison and much has changed. Dave has his life back on track and is trying to help Kenneth however possible, but is witnessing how the highly strung Kenneth tries to win back his ex-girlfriend Sylvie.

The story of two brothers who, even though they have absolutely nothing in common, open a bar together that quickly becomes a regular hangout for nighthawks. Despite the success, they must soon face up to the difficulties inherent in running a family business. Their brotherhood turns into rivalry, through no fault of their own.

This movie portrays the drug scene in Berlin in the 70s, following tape recordings of Christiane F. 14 years old Christiane lives with her mother and little sister in a typical multi-storey apartment building in Berlin. She's fascinated by the 'Sound', a new disco with most modern equipment. Although she's legally too young, she asks a friend to take her. There she meets Detlef, who's in a clique where everybody's on drugs. Step by step she gets drawn deeper into the scene.

An eighteen year old high school drop out and his twenty-seven year old friend start trafficking marijuana across the border of Canada in order to make money and their lives are changed forever.

Jean-Claude is a loud-mouthed, know-it-all and full time boor who is best friends with Stef, a self-styled lady killer who would do better with the fairer sex if he could work up the ambition to wake up in the morning. Stef has decided that he may need some help in finding the woman of his dreams, and embracing loyalty rather than logic he turns to Jean-Claude for advice.

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.

For more than 15 years, two Marseille friends and criminals battle the law, rival gangs, prison authorities and even mined beaches in order to survive.

Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.

Gabriel, aged 10, lives in a comfortable ex-pat neighborhood in Burundi, his ‘small country’. Gabriel is a normal kid, happy, carefree and having adventures with his friends and little sister. Then in 1993, tensions in neighboring Rwanda spill over, threatening his family and his innocence.

14-year-old Elias increasingly feels like an outsider in his village. When he meets his new neighbour of the same age, Alexander, Elias is confronted with his burgeoning sexuality.

After two teenagers from abusive households befriend each other, their lives take a dark adventure into existentialism, despair, and human frailty.

In a youth correctional facility, Joe is preparing his return to society. But William’s arrival turns his desire for freedom into desire of another kind. Behind fences and cell walls, passions begin to play havoc with the need for liberty.

Meet Chala, an eleven year-old boy with a hard life and strong respect for Carmela, his sixth grade teacher. The pair develops a solid bond, but after Carmela suffers an accident, things get complicated…

Ten-year-old Laure isn't like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, local girl Lisa mistakes Laure for a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Mickaël, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.

Because he wanted to protect his little brother, Teddy, a young man without a history, is accused of the murder of his father and sent to a closed educational center, waiting for his trial for parricide. He then plunges into a brutal universe of which he does not know the rules.

An Italian immigrant tries to make a new life in Switzerland, taking on a series of increasingly menial jobs in order to do it. He attempts to fit into his new home and society but fails at every turn. Unable to go home again, will his tenacity and optimism be enough to live on?

Desperate to break free from the poverty of his homeland, Elias boards a ramshackle people-smuggling trawler to France. But when the boat is raided by police, Elias leaps into the ocean, eventually finding himself washed up on a Mediterranean beach resort called Eden. So begins Elias odyssesy across Western Europe to Paris, where wondrous promise, helpful new friends and perilous dangers await him every step of the way.

12-year-old Bailey lives with her single dad Bug and brother Hunter in a squat in North Kent. Bug doesn’t have much time for his kids, and Bailey, who is approaching puberty, seeks attention and adventure elsewhere.

The R of the title stands for the young protagonist, Rune, fearlessly played by Pilou Asbæk. Imprisoned for violent assault, he's a cocky, good-looking young man placed in the hardcore ward, where his survival depends on quickly learning the prison's parallel world of rules, honor, and obligations. R also stands for Rachid, a young Muslim prisoner who becomes Rune's friend and accomplice, defying the rigid racial stratifications among the inmates.

Summer 1968. 14-year-old Wolfgang is deported from his family in the secluded Church Welfare Institution sanctuary. One thing is clear for Wolfgang: His yearning for freedom, he will not soon buried in the bog.

Arriving from all over the Eastern Bloc, the men who loiter around the Gare du Nord train station in Paris are scraping by however they can, forming gangs for support and protection, ever fearful of being caught by the police and deported. When the middle-aged, bourgeois Daniel approaches a boyishly handsome Ukrainian who calls himself Marek for a date, he learns the young man is willing to do anything for some cash.

Two young brothers are abandoned by their mother during summer of 1948, they run into the forest and survive there for seven years.

Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.

From his village in northern Senegal, Yao is a 13-year-old boy ready to do anything to meet his hero: Seydou Tall, a famous French actor. Invited to Dakar to promote his new book, the latter goes to his country of origin for the first time. To fulfill his dream, the young Yao organizes his fugue and brave 387 kilometers alone to the capital. Touched by this child, the actor decides to flee his obligations and to accompany him home. But on the dusty and uncertain roads of Senegal, Seydou understands that while rolling towards the village of the child, it also rolls towards its roots.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

Emma and Anaïs are best friends and yet everything in their life seems to set them apart, their social backgrounds but also their personalities. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, Adolescentes follows the two teenagers during these years where radical transformations and first times punctuate daily life. Through their personal stories, the film offers a rare portrait of France and its recent history.

Blue Story is a tragic tale of a friendship between Timmy and Marco, two young boys from opposing postcodes. Timmy, a shy, smart, naive and timid young boy from Deptford, goes to school in Peckham where he strikes up a friendship with Marco, a charismatic, streetwise kid from the local area. Although from warring postcodes, the two quickly form a firm friendship until it is tested and they wind up on rival sides of a street war. Blue Story depicts elements of Rapman's own personal experiences and aspects of his childhood.

Three war-torn strangers posing as a family flee Sri Lanka’s civil war to start over in a troubled Paris suburb, but their past traumas resurface as they struggle to survive in their new environment.

Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing boundaries against his best friend at elementary school. While no one knows what actually happened between the two boys, the incident triggers a series of events, forcing parents and school staff into a captivating battle of redemption where madness, desire and obsession arise.

When Nora witnesses Abel being bullied by other kids, she rushes to protect him by warning their father. But Abel forces her to remain silent. Caught in a conflict of loyalty, Nora will ultimately try to find her place, torn between children's and adult's worlds.

When 30-ish rich kid Lenny has to take care of 15-year-old David, who’s suffering from heart disease, it’s the beginning of a wild adventure. Lenny fearlessly breaks all the rules to fulfill his young friend’s every wish.

Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she's too sensitive to kill. When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha's life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers. But their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul's last wishes before day breaks.

Lia and Tina are two beautiful girls who meet and realize that they have a lot in common. They are both young, beautiful and pissed off, so they decide to hitchhike their way to Rome to find Nazariota's commune, a place to stay for free and have all the sex they want... or so they think. Things don't go as they have planned though, and soon they become involved in prostitution, the police and an aggressive gang.

After a string of abusive relationships, Wanda abandons her family and seeks solace in the company of a petty criminal.

For years, Ollie has illicitly helped the struggling residents of her North Dakota oil boomtown access Canadian health care and medication. When the authorities catch on, she plans to abandon her crusade, only to be dragged in even deeper after a desperate plea for help from her sister.

As children, Nick and his little brother take care of their baby brother while their mother drinks herself senseless. But the baby dies, and both brothers blame themselves. Many years later, Nick is out of prison after serving time for an assault. He drinks, lives in a shelter and tries to help an old friend. When their mother dies, Nick meets his brother at the funeral. The brother, who remains nameless, is a single father to a young boy, but also supports a drug habit that is spiraling out of control. When an opportunity presents itself, he becomes a drug dealer to secure his son's future. Eventually, the two brothers meet again.

Everyday, three sex workers cross the border from France into Belgium to practice their trade. At the end of one particularly hot summer, all three share a secret that will bind them together forever.

Mousse and Louis are young, beautiful, rich and in love. But drugs have invaded their lives. One day, they overdose and Louis dies. Mousse survives, but soon learns she's pregnant. Feeling lost, Mousse runs away to a house far from Paris. Several months later, Louis' brother joins her in her refuge.

Mona, a prisoner on work release, meets Clément, a shy actor. Desperate to impress Mona, Clément recruits his extroverted friend, Abel, to help. When Mona becomes more interested in Abel, it sets off a conflict between the two friends. Meanwhile, Mona attempts to keep her past hidden.

Harassed by bullies because of his mild autism, teen Ben finds refuge in an online computer game, which leads him to his virtual dream girl, Scarlite. Together, the odd couple seeks revenge against Ben's tormentors.

The story centres on a group of teenagers street cast in their neighbourhood and selected to play in a feature film during the summer. The film tells the story of this film shoot and of the connections that will be formed during it.

A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family.

Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.

Despite their differences, Celeste and Sihem quickly become inseparable. The common will to get out of drugs seals their fusional friendship. This will be as much a force as an obstacle when, transferred from the center that welcomes them, they find themselves left to themselves, to the test of the real world and its temptations. They will have to fight to finally live.

A friendship is formed between an ex-gangster, and two groups of hitmen - those who want to protect him and those who were sent to kill him.

The life of two men changed unexpectedly when Ajith, an Indian sailor who was robbed and lost everything, appears out of nowhere in front of Pierre, a single and grumpy Frenchman.

Yuri, 16, has lived all his life in Gagarin Towers, a vast red-brick housing project on the outskirts of Paris. He dreams of becoming an astronaut. When plans to demolish Gagarin Towers leak out, Yuri joins the resistance. With his friends Diana and Houssam, he embarks on a mission to save their home, which has become his “starship.”

