Fall 2023

Drawn in by the haunting specter of the Florida panther, wildlife photographer Carlton Ward unites a coalition of biologists, ranchers, conservationists, and Indigenous Peoples on the frontlines of an accelerating battle between forces of renewal and destruction that have pushed the Everglades to the brink of ecological collapse.

REALITY WINNER

The incredible true story of Reality Winner in her own words. Filmed over five years, this is the only documentary about the young NSA whistleblower who exposed Russian interference in U.S.elections and went to jail for it. With exclusive access to Reality Winner and the media outlet involved in her arrest, this film also reveals FBI evidence never before released. Would you risk your freedom to protect democracy?

THE 50

While serving life sentences in a dangerously overcrowded and drug-saturated prison system, 50 men embark on a radical journey to become some of the first incarcerated Substance Abuse Counselors in the country. The 50 is a powerful study on trauma and repair, a universal look at the long and winding road to heal, and an exploration into how the most discounted among us built one of the most powerful models of rehabilitation we have.

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.

ROSIE'S THEATER KIDS

Ten years ago, inspired by the teacher who inspired her, actor-comedian Rosie O'Donnell established a school, giving kids access to dance, music, and drama. Through archival footage, interviews, first-person accounts, and performances, this heartwarming and memorable film tells of the life-changing impact that the organization has had on its students and alumni - and how the power of musical theater and the performing arts helps young people unlock their full potential.

RAMONA

Feeling unprepared for her upcoming role as a 15-year-old pregnant girl from the outskirts of Santo Domingo, an actor from a more affluent background, Camila, decides to sit down with pregnant young girls to hear their stories. Ramona is a brilliant mix of telenovela pastiche, observational documentary, filmed rehearsals, cinéma vérité and theatre that constantly plays with the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, reality and artifice.

AFGHAN DREAMERS

In Afghanistan, an all-girl robotics team risk everything to prove they can build a name for themselves in the world. Working in secret under the Taliban regime and in a male-dominated cultural environment, the girls encounter enormous challenges. With exceptional access, Afghan Dreamers tells an insprirational story about an extraodinarily brave group of young women.

THE COMPUTER ACCENT

While Artificial Intelligence has made in-roads in almost every area of human labor, the field of artistic creation was once regarded as relatively safe. The Computer Accent documents the fascinating, sometimes frustrating process when the pop group YACHT invites an AI program into their creative process to generate the band's seventh album. The Computer Accent offeres a window into a future that is already here.

BELLUM - THE DAEMON OF WAR

Opening with Robert Oppenheimer’s immortal quoting of Hindu scripture following the first nuclear test bombings, this fascinating documentary explores the intersection of modern warfare and the development of AI, focusing on three seemingly disparate locations and lives; a scientist in Sweden, a private military contractor in the Nevada desert, and a world renowned war photographer in Afghanistan.

MEMORY GAMES

Memory makes us human. Memory Games offers a thrilling insight into the lives of four athletes as they compete for the title of World Memory Champion. Their unique approaches to memorizing and recalling mind boggling amounts of information and their life stories form the basis for a visually stunning and thought-provoking documentary that also looks at how memory permeates every aspect of our lives.

THE GRAVE OF ST. ORAN

Master storyteller Neil Gaiman narrates this strange tale of saintly murder and the dark history behind the chapel on the island of Iona. The story is brought to life by director Jim Batt with beautifully illustrated paper cutouts, meticulously animated using stop motion techniques and in-camera visual effects.

ANHELL69

After members of the queer scene in Medellín, Colombia are cast for a vampire movie, the film’s protagonist dies of a heroin overdose at age 21. As the youth in Colombia grapple with a disarmingly high rate of suicide and drug overdoses, the documentary Anhell69 explores this generation’s “no future” mindset while chronicling the making of a new film, a film without borders or genders: a “trans film” about all those people who don’t belong to anything or anyone.

DEVIL PUT THE COAL IN THE GROUND

A unique oral history of West Virginia, and meditation on the suffering and devastation brought on by the coal industry and its decline - a cautionary tale of unfettered corporate power and an elegy to a vanishing Appalachia. Consciously eschewing exploitative filmmaking around the opioid epidemic or poverty, the film focuses on its people – all linked by the love of their home state and desire to stay put against all odds.

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.

PAY OR DIE

Today, nearly 2 million Americans are being held for ransom. Without insulin, they wont surive. Pay or Die follows families on the receiving end of these ransom notes, revealing the harrowing reality of life with chronic illness in the richest country in the world. This enraging and enlightening film lays bare the human cost of the United States’ insulin affordability crisis, and serves as a call to action against the medical-industrial complex that monetizes our bodies and lives.

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?

MINAMATA MANDALA

Filmed over 15 years, this epic three-part documentary by Kazuo Hara (The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On) chronicles the history of struggle for a community in southern Japan suffering from “Minamata disease”—a debilitating neurological disease caused by methylmercury poisoning from the consumption of fish contaminated by industrial wastewater—as they continue the decades-long battle for legal recognition and reparations from the government.

THE CRAMPS AND THE MUTANTS: THE NAPA STATE TAPES

On June 13, 1978, The Cramps, the soon-to-be legendary rock band went to play Napa State, a psychiatric hospital in the small town of Napa in Northern California. Opening for them was the Mutants, an eclectic septet of art school punks from nearby San Francisco. Here for the first time ever: the long-lost tapes of these two legendary performances, both unedited and fully remastered from the original reel-to-reel videotape.

THE STRANGE MISTER VICTOR

Setting its scene in the rowdy, wide-open port city of Toulon, Grémillon’s acclaimed drama stars legendary actor Raimu (“The greatest actor who ever lived.” - Orson Welles) as a well-respected shopkeeper who, unbeknownst to his neighbors, is running a front for a ruthless criminal gang. "Gremillon’s films are among the most innovative and expressive… and in many ways they look ahead to the rule breaking of the French New Wave." - The New York Times. New 4K Restoration

GUEULE D'MOUR (LADY KILLER)

The first collaboration between filmmaker Jean Grémillon and legendary actor Jean Gabin, this adaptation of a novel by André Boucler features the young Gabin as a foreign-legion Casanova – the “lady killer” of the title – who meets his match in the mysterious seductress Madeleine. "Not every rarity is a revelation, but Lady Killer strikes me as the real deal." – The New Yorker. New 4K Restoration

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.

ANAMNESIS

How to portray a murderer? For many years filmmakers of this documentary were in intensive contact with Stefan S., who murdered a colleague 15 years ago. Now it’s his last year in jail, and he is being prepared for his return to society. This includes undergoing various types of therapy, including group sessions on “Masculinity and Identity.” An intriguing study on the elusiveness of truth and one of the most progressive programs for the treatment of violent criminals.

STAND UP MY BEAUTY

Nardos, an Azmari singer from Addis Ababa, dreams of telling stories about the lives of ordinary people through her music. In her search of stories for her songs, she meets Gennet, a poet who lives on the streets with her children. As Nardos puts the lives of Ethiopian women, their visions and power at the centre of her creation, we dive deeper and deeper into a rapidly changing country.

THIS TRAIN I RIDE

A freight train crosses the landscape like a giant steel snake ripping through the silence. One day, three women left everything behind to defy danger and cross the country on board freight trains. They wait for them, hiding in the bushes, sleeping under highway bridges. In this beautiful documentary, the director becomes these women’s traveling companion. Their trajectories cross and echo each other: a desire to live, a spiritual quest, eternal rebellion.

EVERYTHING WILL NOT BE FINE

Adrian was born in the year of the Chernobyl accident and his mother always believed that his partial blindness was caused by her visit to Ukraine while she was six months pregnant. Upon learning this, Adrian and his friend, a woman from Kiev also affected by the disaster, set out to meet people dealing with the effects of what happened in 1986. They discover the immense scale of Chernobyl’s impact on a new generation.

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.