If you can’t stay, and you can’t return, where do you go?

Filmed over three years across Poland, France and the UK, Nowhere To Go examines the narrowing of asylum protections in Europe and the political forces shaping them. As governments introduce increasingly restrictive measures, migration becomes a focal point of public debate, often obscuring the realities faced by those caught within the system and dividing communities.

The film traces the experience of Alex, who crosses from Belarus into Poland, is fingerprinted in Germany, survives repeated evictions in France, and, with no safe and legal route available, makes eleven attempts to cross the Channel. For him, the small boat is not the beginning of danger, but the point at which physical risk gives way to prolonged legal uncertainty. Years later, he is still waiting, his future unresolved.

Drawing on lived experience and on-the-ground insight, the film reveals how policies intended to deter movement often reshape it instead, while contributing to rising costs and mounting pressure on local communities. It explores why people attempt dangerous crossings from countries considered safe, and how smuggling routes emerge in the absence of viable alternatives.

At a moment when much of what shapes these journeys remains unseen, Nowhere To Go offers a closer look at how the system functions in practice, and how its consequences are felt both by those navigating it and by the communities around them.