3000 Nights
Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri’s stunning feature debut is inspired by a true story and shot in a real prison. 3000 NIGHTS traces a young mother’s journey of hope, resilience and survival against all odds. Accused of helping a teenage boy on the run, Layal, a newlywed Palestinian schoolteacher, finds herself incarcerated in a top security […]
What Is Democracy?
What does it mean for the people to rule—and is that something we even want? Director Astra Taylor’s idiosyncratic, philosophical journey takes us from ancient Athens’ groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalism’s roots in medieval Italy; from modern-day Greece grappling with financial collapse and a mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its […]
Etlinisigu’niet (Bleed Down)
Attempts to “get rid of the Indian problem” have failed. The future is coming. A howl of pain rips across the land in Etlinisigu’niet as traditional life gives way to Indigenous peoples being starved to ensure compliance with government orders. Children forced from their families and penned into the horrors of residential school. Men, women […]
Mama Colonel
Colonel Honorine, more commonly known as “Mama Colonel”, works for the Congolese police force and heads the unit for the protection of minors and the fight against sexual violence. Having worked for 15 years in Bukavu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she learns she is transferred to Kisangani. There, she […]
Modified
Shot over a span of ten years, MODIFIED follows the grassroots struggle to label genetically modified foods, exposing the cozy relationship between governments and the biotech industry. The film is anchored in the moving story of Nova Scotia-based filmmaker Aube Giroux’s relationship to her mother—a prolific gardener, seed saver, and food activist who was fighting […]
Freelancer on the Front Lines
What makes Jesse Rosenfeld tick? A freelance reporter based in the Middle East, Jesse has made the region the focus of his work. FREELANCER ON THE FRONT LINES accompanies him in his daily life as he criss-crosses Egypt, Israel and Palestine, Turkey and Iraq. Examining thorny geopolitical realities shaped by the events transforming the Middle […]
In Praise of Nothing
“Nothing” might not have a very promising name, but it’s nonetheless an enterprising character. Tired of being misunderstood, it runs away from home and travels across eight mountain ranges and eight seas to come and visit us—commenting on all it sees, contemplating life and death, politics, the relationship between men and women, and the meaning […]
The Troublemakers
The Troublemakers follows the lives of four down-on-their-luck characters. Surrounded by the vestiges of conspicuous consumption, they struggle to survive outside of society, fashioning their own aesthetics of poverty and devising strategies to navigate a surveillance society, evading or performing for cameras everywhere. The Troublemakers is equally fact and fiction, documentary and performance, home movie and narrative […]
Bluefin
The film explores the baffling mystery of why the normally wary bluefin tuna no longer fear humans. Local fishermen swear tuna are so starving and abundant now that they will literally eat out of people’s hands like pets. But something is not right. One thing is certain: this sudden and incredible abundance of tuna off their shores flies in the face of scientific assessments claiming […]
Dolores
History tells us Cesar Chavez transformed the U.S. labor movement by leading the first farm workers’ union. But missing from this story is his equally influential co-founder, Dolores Huerta, who tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century. Like so many […]
The Apology
THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Some 70 years after their imprisonment in so-called “comfort stations”, the three “grandmothers”—Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela […]
The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets
Filmmakers Adam and Zack Khalil (Ojibway), in collaboration with artist Jackson Polys, investigate the recent court case that decided the fate of the remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found in Kennewick, Washington State in 1996. The case pitted the Umatilla people and other tribes, who wanted to provide a burial to the “Ancient One,” […]
Three Thousand
“My father was born in a spring igloo—half snow, half skin. I was born in a hospital, with jaundice and two teeth.” With quiet command, the young Inuk artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—12 minutes of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the past, present and future of Inuit in a radiant new […]
More than a Word
MORE THAN A WORD analyzes the Washington football team and their use of the derogatory term R*dskins. Using interviews from both those in favour of changing the name and those against, the film presents a deeper analysis of the many issues surrounding the Washington team name. The documentary also examines the history of Native American […]
Ada for Mayor (Alcaldessa)
Ada Colau, a well known activist against evictions in Spain, decides to run for Mayor of Barcelona. Surrounded by a team with little experience in institutional politics, Ada speaks about her doubts and discoveries during this vertiginous journey. The film combines the enthusiastic construction of a new political movement with the inner struggle of someone […]
Memories of a Penitent Heart
Combining a wealth of recently discovered home movies, video, and written documents with artfully shot contemporary interviews and vérité footage, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a documentary that cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama. Originating from filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo’s suspicion that there was something ugly in her family’s past, the film […]
