Family Relations

Spurred by a provocative family memory and a lifetime of separation from the country her mother left behind, a young filmmaker delves into her mother and grandmother's complicated pasts, and her own fractured Iranian identity. Named for a Farsi term of endearment, Joonam is infused with humor and heart like only a film about family could be.

K-FAMILY AFFAIRS

Arum's parents belong to the pivotal generation that led South Korea’s democratization through the student movements of the 1980s. Her father chose the path of a public servant, while her mother became a feminist activist. Through the lens of her family’s journey, Arum delves into the political history of South Korea, grappling with the role her own generation must assume.

LOTUS SPORTS CLUB

Shot in Cambodia over 5 years, Lotus Sports Club, is an inspiring coming-of-age story that centers around Leak, a teenage trans man who plays football in the under-21s women’s team of Kampong Chhnang, and Pa Vann, the coach and father-figure to Leak and other LGBTQ+ players on the team. This compelling, fascinating, and empowering story will take the viewers on a unique and emotional journey through a world of love and solidarity between individuals who have finally found a community they would only have dreamt before.

A PICTURE TO REMEMBER

A Picture to Remember is an essayistic account of a family's long journey through the war. It chronicles the search for a way to handle terrible and recurring losses experienced by three generations of Ukrainian women-those of the director, her mother, and that of her grandmother. The Kyiv-based filmmaker uses old family films in her attempt to bridge the distance between her and her grandmother in Donetsk.

HAPPY CAMPERS

Every summer, working-class families enjoy waterfront living in a scrappy trailer park off the coast of Virginia. When the relentless march of capitalism threatens their shabby Shangri-La, the denizens ofInlet View face the inevitable, and reveal the secrets to a rich life. As the familiar narrative of the “haves” displacing the “have-nots” plays out once again, the proletariats hold tight to their final days in the sun. The well-to-do crowd that moves in will never be as wealthy.

DEAR THIRTEEN

An incisive and timely documentary, Dear Thirteen weaves together nine stories of thirteen-year-olds from across the globe. Video diaries and candid interviews reveal how global issues are shaping – and being shaped by – young people: gender identity, rising anti-Semitism, gun violence, and racial divisions. This empathetic portrait of a new generation goes beyond stereotypes of adolescence to capture the complexity of finding a way into adulthood today.

NAKED GARDENS

Naked Gardens immerses audiences in the complex, unseen world of a family nudist resort in the Florida Everglades. Filmed over one season at this lush tropical campsite, the film follows the stories of individuals – rebellious retirees, LGBTQ loners, exiles from conservative America, and families with young children – all drawn to an unusual community, which promises both non-conformist values, and for some, a cheap place to live.

QUEER AND FRUM

A moving and powerful short documentary, Queer and Frum is the story of two former Orthodox Jews, Chaim Levin and Lieb Swartz-Brownstein, and their unique journeys to becoming openly queer. Shot in Orthodox neighborhoods of New York City, the documentary takes a deep look into Hasidic life and the experience of living with intersecting identities in a religious world.

THE FIRE THAT TOOK HER

At age 31, mother-of-two Judy Malinowski was doused in petrol and set on fire by her crazed ex-boyfriend. She was also one of the first victims ever to testify from beyond the grave at the trial for her own murder. A story that lives at the intersection of true crime and #MeToo, The Fire That Took Her goes deep inside a landmark case to ask a timely question: How much must women suffer in order to be believed?

EAT YOUR CATFISH

Paralyzed by late-stage ALS and reliant on round-the-clock care, Kathryn clings to a mordant wit as she yearns to witness her daughter's wedding. Shot from her fixed point of view, Eat Your Catfish delivers a profoundly intimate, layered and wryly funny portrait of a family teetering on the brink, grappling with the daily demands of disability and in-home caretaking.

OUTSIDE

Ukrainian filmmaker Olha Zhurba’s debut feature tells the story of Roma, who at the age of 13 became the poster child of the Maidan revolution. A street kid who ran around the front lines of Kyiv throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, Roma’s face defined an uprising. But behind the camouflage uniform, sunglasses and fearlessness hid a lonely boy from an orphanage. When Roma turns 18, his only option is returning to the streets and the company of his loyal older brother, who has resorted to crime to survive.

ANGELS OF SINJAR

Hanifa, a young Yezidi woman, miraculously survives the ISIS attack on the Yezidi religious and ethnic minority in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. Her five younger sisters are all trucked off and enslaved. Based on exclusive access to one of the most dangerous and underreported places on earth, Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Hanna Polak tracks Hanifa’s mission to find her sisters and bring them home.

BROTHERHOOD

Jabir, Usama and Useir, are three young Bosnian brothers, who grew up in the shadow of their father, a strict Islamist preacher. When he gets sentenced to two years in prison, for terrorism, the three brothers are suddenly left alone. They can explore the newly acquired freedom on the difficult journey to becoming men. Brotherhood is an exploration of youth, manhood and search for identity.

ANASTASIA

This powerful documentary short spotlights the life of Russian civil rights activist Anastasia Shevchenko as she faces the brutal repercussions of speaking out against her government. Shevchenko endured house arrest for two years, and became the first person found guilty of “organizing activity of an undesirable organization” by a Russian court for her work with the Open Russia movement. Amnesty International declared her a “prisoner of conscience.”

FAVORITE DAUGHTER

An intimate portrait of director Dana Reilly's grandmother Sylvia Weinstock and mother Janet Isa, sheltering in place together in a lower Manhattan apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Raw and charming, melancholy and funny—a portrait of two women with vastly different experiences coming together and supporting one another through the uncertainty of spending the next chapters of their lives “alone,” without a partner.

IN THE BONES

An extraordinarily vital and urgent documentary, In The Bones provides searing insight into the culture that overturned Roe v. Wade. A cinematic journey through the ordinary lives of woman and children in Mississippi, the documentary interweavs their stories during a legislative session in which equal pay for equal work and abortion rights are being decided.

NORTH BY CURRENT

A visual rumination on the understated relationships between mothers and children, truths and myths, losses and gains. After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown, preparing to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor, and trans embodiment.

THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS

When Jennifer Abbott lost her sister to cancer, her sorrow opened her up to the profound gravity of climate breakdown. This cinematic journey by the Sundance award-winning director (The Corporation) takes us around the world to witness a planet in crisis: from Greta Thunberg's condemnation of world leaders to Australia’s catastrophic fires and dying Great Barrier Reef to the island nation of Kiribati, drowned by rising sea levels.

FORGET ME NOT

Forget Me Not follows three unwed mothers staying at a shelter in the countryside on Jeju Island-in South Korea. Each one has to decide if she wants to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Engelstoft’s sensitive portrait brings us close to a forbidden world and through her own experience as a Korean adoptee, she gives a deeply personal and extraordinary insight into a culture in which women can't choose their own fate.

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BIRDS

This extraordinarily beautiful and emotionally rich documentary finds filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifting through the memories and dreams of her ancestors. In prismatic images, we get the sense of a family’s entire lineage, starting with her naval officer grandfather, who married her grandmother on her 21st birthday before spending extended periods at sea. It's the beginning of a generational saga, told in shards of memory and voiceover.

PHYLLIS AND HAROLD

An astoundingly frank journey through a disastrous 59-year marriage. Drawing on a lifetime of her family’s home movies and interviews made over 12 years, filmmaker Cindy Kliene mixes reportage, cinema verité and animation to uncover family secrets and tell a story that could not be shown publicly as long as her father was still alive.Phyllis and Harold delve into the mystery of time passing, the nature of living a life, and the challenges of losing those we love.

EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle. He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition — filmmaking to more deeply understand the self, and the other — spirals into a process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son. This documentary holds a steady lens to the way the act of cinema unearths, binds, heals and destroys.

SAN VITTORE

Every time children visit their parents at San Vittore, Milan’s oldest prison, they’re subjected to thorough security checks – backpacks searched, toys checked, pat downs, metal detectors, endless waks down bare corridors. Incorporating drawings made by the children while they wait (in some the prison is transformed into a castle, the prisoners into kings and queens), this striking short documentary from Yuri Ancarini meticulously depicts the lingering psychological and emotional trauma of this process.

JADDOLAND

A visit to her mother’s home art studio in Texas prompts the filmmaker to explore the meaning of home and the search for belonging across three generations of her Iraqi family. Winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

LIFE AND NOTHING MORE

Winner of the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award, Antonio Méndez Esparza's (Aquí y allá) powerful second feature presents another sensitive portrait of a struggling family - a single mother raising her two children when her 14-year-old son has a brush with the law. Life and Nothing More employs documentary-style realism in this snapshot of race, class and the bonds of family in contemporary America.

THE GRIEF OF OTHERS

At once literary and gently cinematic, Patrick Wang's (A Bread Factory, In The Family) second feature is based on Leah Hager Cohen’s critically acclaimed novel. After suffering a tragic loss, a family welcomes an unexpected visitor into their lives and find themselves growing more alert to the hurt, humor, warmth, and grief of others.

IN THE FAMILY

The Independent Spirit Award-nominated debut of acclaimed filmmaker Patrick Wang (A Bread Factory, The Grief of Others), In The Family is a heartfelt story woven around child custody, two-Dad families, loss, interracial relations, the American South, and the nature of what it means to be in a family, all explored with ambitious and rewarding nuance.

CABALLERANGO

In the Mexican village of Milpillas, deteriorating economic and social conditions have led to a wave of suicides among its young people. The remarkable new documentary Cabellerango, from filmmaker Juan Pablo González, examines one such case, relying on conversations with family members and townspeople to piece together the factors that led to this tragic incident, and in the process, reflect upon the changes occurring across much of the country.

AMÉRICA

Three brothers confront the chasm between adolescent yearning and adult responsibilities when brought together to care for their charismatic ninety-three year old grandmother in this critically-acclaimed documentary, “a sublime, magical masterpiece.” (Joshua Oppenheimer, director, The Act of Killing)

MR. FISH: CARTOONING FROM THE DEEP END

A political cartoonist known for his subversive and often controversial art, Mr. Fish’s work can be seen in publications like Harper’s, The Nation and the LA Times. In this revealing documentary, we are introduced to the dangerously funny cartoonist as he struggles to stay true to his creativity in a quickly changing political and economic climate.

IN THE STILLNESS OF SOUNDS

A magical documentary that asks us to reconsider how we see – and hear – our world, In The Stillness of Sounds follows the work of a renowned sound engineer and biologist who ventures deep into the forest to capture sounds no one’s heard before: a bee rubbing its legs together, the drumbeat of marching ants, the songs of nocturnal animals, for a wondrous appreciation of nature’s ecosystem.

CANIBA

A new documentary from the groundbreaking filmmakers behind Leviathan, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s Caniba reflects on the discomfiting significance of cannibalistic desire in human existence through the prism of one Japanese man, Issei Sagawa, and his mysterious relationship with his brother, Jun Sagawa.

DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN?

“In 1946, my great-grandfather murdered a black man named Bill Spann and got away with it.” So begins this acclaimed documentary which takes us on a journey through the American South – interweaving scenes from To Kill a Mockingbird and Rosa Parks’ investigation into the Recy Taylor case – to uncover the truth behind a horrific incident and the societal mores that empowered it.

MILWAUKEE 53206

MILWAUKEE 53206 is America’s most incarcerated zip code; 62% of adult males in this mostly African-American community have spent time in a correctional facility. This urgent documentary examines how decades of poverty, unemployment, and a lack of opportunity has contributed to the crisis of mass incarceration in this and other communities across the nation.

THE BEEKEEPER AND HIS SON

The widening gap between generations in China today is at the heart of this deeply resonant documentary about a son, recently returned from the city, trying to modernize his aging father’s beekeeping business.

INSIDE THESE WALLS

One family's efforts to secure freedom for their father, a political dissident serving a life sentence in China, is a story of international intrigue, diplomatic maneuvering and immense personal sacrifice.

LIVING WITH GIANTS

In a remote arctic village, a young Inuk boy's transition into adulthood becomes a quiet and devastating portrait of the issues facing the entire Inuit community in the outstanding documentary Living with Giants

IN THE GAME

The struggles of a girls soccer team in a mostly hispanic, inner city neighborhood reveals the obstacles that low-income students face in their quest for higher education.

DAUGHTERS OF ANATOLIA

A singular portrait of a nomadic goat herding family whose livelihood and traditions are being threatened by an increasingly urbanized world.