M - P

An immersive viewing experience of sound and imagery, Nocturnes weaves together an intricate and poetic tapestry of our world. Ecologist Mansi sets out on a quest to study moths in one of the most vibrant places on earth. She teams up with Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community. By focusing on a small, ephemeral, nocturnal creature like the moth, Nocturnes seeks to question a human-centric view of the world.

MOURNING IN LOD

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict told through three people whose fates become inextricably linked in a vicious cycle of violence. The outpouring of love, anger, forgiveness and sorrow that follows in their wake offers a glimpse of morning light to offset a collective state of mourning with no end in sight. The film provides a first-hand account of the way our individual actions reverberate, amplify and shape the course of each other’s lives.

MÁRIO

From Billy Woodberry, acclaimed director of Bless Their Little Hearts and When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead, Mário follows the story and legacy of Mário Pinto de Andrade, founder of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), Pan-African thinker and activist whose critical mission within the African liberation movements of the 60’s and 70’s laid the groundwork for the identity and representation of the newly formed African nations after European colonization.

PICTURES OF GHOSTS

A wondrous ode to movies and movie-going, Pictures of Ghosts, from acclaimed director Kleber Mendonca Filho (Bacurau, Aquarius, Neighboring Sounds), is a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, set in the urban landscape of Recife, Brazil: a historical and human territory, examined through the great movie theatres that served as spaces of conviviality during the 20th century.

OMOIYARI: A SONG FILM BY KISHI BASHI

In Omoiyari: A Song Film by Kishi Bashi, internationally acclaimed composer and songwriter K Ishibashi (professionally know as "Kishi Bashi") embarks on a personal quest by creating his music in locations relevant to the Japanese American Incarceration during WWII. Omoiyari is a genre breaking, artistic exploration that fuses history, music, and the complexities of the human condition.

PEOPLE OF THE LAKE

On the northern shores of Lake Geneva where he has settled, Jean-Marie Straub brings to the water’s peaceful surface the history of a local resistance that shaped Switzerland’s post-war political landscape.

PATH OF THE PANTHER

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

MORE THAN I WANT TO REMEMBER

One night at her home in southeastern Congo, 14-year-old Mugeni awakes to the sounds of bombs. As her family scatters to the surrounding forests to save themselves, Mugeni finds herself completely alone. From there, she sets out on a remarkable solo journey across the globe, determined to reunite with her lost loved ones and lift up the Banyamulenge people.

PACIFICTION

Named the Best Film of the Year by Cahiers du Cinema, and acclaimed by numerous publications, Pacifiction is a mesmerizing feature from filmmaker Albert Serra that follows a French bureaucrat (Benoit Magimel in an extraordinary performance) drifting through a fateful trip to a French Polynesian island. "One of the most beautiful and rigorously introspective movies of this or any year, a film that makes you deeply ponder the fate of humanity itself."(IndieWire)

O SANGUE (BLOOD)

Admirers of Pedro Costa’s more recent work are often thrown for a thrilling loop by the glossy, liquid textures and lush atmospherics of the director’s first feature, a beguiling fairytale about the trials undergone by two brothers in the wake of their father’s violent death. “O Sangue,” Costa said in an interview, “was also the beginning of my love—maybe love is the wrong word—for domestic cinema. A kind of cinema that shows how people live.”

PARADISE

Michael Almereyda’s (Tesla, Hamlet, Marjorie Prime) Paradise is an astonishingly beautiful and poignant sketchbook, a collection of fragmentary episodes captured during ten years of travels. Shot in roughly two dozen cities in nine different countries, they are linked, the director writes, by “the idea that life is made up of brief paradisiacal moments—moments routinely taken for granted, and always slipping away."

PUBLIC LIBRARY

Every day, hundreds of visitors seek refuge at the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (Public Information Library) in the heart of Paris. Between the bookshelves, we meet inspired students, passionate experts, and researchers exploring a topic , as well as individuals just seeking quiet and respite from the outside world. Each of these people “inhabits” the library in their own way. And through this wonderful documentary, they share with us what this public space means to them.

NAVIGATORS

In 1924, the Buford, a large dormant ship, cost little to rent. Buster Keaton used it as a spacious set for his film The Navigator. And without realising it, by filming the vessel, he archived the scene of another story of crossing. A few years earlier, the Buford had served the forced exile of 249 political opponents of the United States government, including anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

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.

PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND (New 2k Restoration)

Presented in a new 2K restoration, Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind is a visual meditation on the progressive history of the United States as seen through cemeteries, historic plaques and markers. Loosely inspired by Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ visiting the resting places of such famed figures as Malcolm X, Susan B. Anthony and Crazy Horse, alongside sites of pivotal struggles, such as the 1770 Boston Massacre.

THE MAD SONGS OF FERNANDA HUSSEIN

Shot over a period of six years on a minuscule budget and with a cast of nonprofessional actors, The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein revisits the experience of the Gulf War through a reverse lens, focusing on the war's reverberations in America. Weaving three fictional stories alongside documentary footage, interviews and a singular concert performance, creates a multi-layered text that examines the lasting ramifications of the war on three characters in New Mexico.

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.

MAURICE HINES: BRING THEM BACK

An intimate portrait of an outspoken showman who with humor and grace navigates the highs and lows of a seven-decade career, and a complex relationship with his superstar brother, Gregory Hines. Maurice and friends — Chita Rivera, Mercedes Ellington and Debbie Allen — tell tales from his seven-decade career, while reflecting on the ever-present challenges of being a gay, black man in show biz.

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.

THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE

Presented in a beautiful restoration and newly translated, Hong Sangsoo’s breakthrough second feature is an early masterwork from the prolific filmmaker. Playing with structure, perspective and time – elements that would become hallmarks of his later work – the film follows a young woman, Jisook, who, fresh off her relationship with a married man, joins two girlfriends for a vacation in the mountainous Kangwon region and quickly makes the same mistakes.

MALNI - TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE

A poetic documentary circling the origin of the death myth from the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, Małni follows two people as they wander through their surrounding nature, the spirit world, and something much deeper inside. Hopinka takes us on a journey through language and belief, offering a beautiful lesson about humanity’s place on this and other worlds, deceptively small and profoundly deep.

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.

NA CHINA

The implantation of African trade  in Guangzhou is a recent phenomenon, on which Marie Voignier reports through her interlinking portraits of Jackie, Julie, Shanny who have come to set up their business on site. Amidst the monstrous accumulation of merchandise on the endless markets of the megacity, the film follows these African business women grappling with the globalised Chinese economy.

THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF

This haunting documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Pietro Marcello, director of Martin Eden and Lost and Beautiful is a sui generis love story, following the 20-year relationship between a Sicilian heavy named Vincenzo and a trans convict named Mary after their meet-cute in prison. But Marcello isn’t merely content to render their romance in all its love and complexity: The Mouth of the Wolf is also a lyrical, sensuous, and melancholy tribute to the port city of Genoa, capturing its singular aura and its intoxicating air of eternity.

THE PAGEANT

The Miss Holocaust Survivor Beauty Pageant takes place every year to the delight of its participants and audience. To take part in this unique contest, sponsored by an Evangelical Christian organization, the female survivors have to retell their traumatic stories one more time. The Pageant is a fascinating and important documentary about how memory, politics and spectacle are interconnected.

PAJU

“A masterpiece. With this film, Park Chan-ok revealed herself as one of Korean cinema’s smartest and most stylish talents. Complex and enigmatic.” (The Guardian) Delicately unveiled through an anachronistic period of eight years, director Park Chan-Ok (Jealousy is My Middle Name) leaves no controversial stone unturned by exploring the dialectical forces at work within of a community that simultaneously resists and accepts change.

MR. TOILET: The World's #2 Man

To a stranger, he’s a guy obsessed with toilets, but to those who know him he's “Mr. Toilet,” a crusader in global sanitation. A former entrepreneur, Jack Sim uses humor to campaign for something no one dares talk about: shit. It's a crisis that impacts over 2 billion people. In India alone, 200,000 children die each year from lack of safe sanitation. Jack fought for and established UN World Toilet Day, but with recent corporate pushback and thinning resources, he is discovering there is a price to pay for being the world's #2 hero.

METEORS

One night, meteors start to fall in a Kurdish village on Turkey’s southern border with Syria. Earlier that year, the villagers endured a sustained and brutal assault by Turkish military forces. Neither the incident nor the fatalities were ever covered by local media. Incorporating internet uploads, foreign news reports and intimate interviews, this poetic documentary attempts to correct the historical record during one night when the sky is lit up with meteors.

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.

THE ORGANIZER

Before its infamous demise, ACORN had been the largest community organization in the US, a national political powerhouse for the poor that transformed lives and communities. Featuring a wealth of archival footage, this is a comprehensive portrait of the organization and its founder, Wade Rathke, as well as an exploration of that much maligned & misunderstood occupation -- community organizing.

NOTES ON AN APPEARANCE

A young man disappears while working on a biography of an enigmatic and controversial political theorist in Ricky D'Ambrose's extraordinary debut film. Set inside New York City apartments, subway stations, bookstores and cafés, Notes has been hailed as "an anti-mystery in the tradition of L’Avventura assembled with the cool reserve of Robert Bresson." (Village Voice)

PARABETON: PIER LUIGI NERVI AND ROMAN CONCRETE

Considered the Architect‘s Architect of the 20th century, Nervi is the creator of style-forming constructions and a grand master of concrete buildings. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, Parabeton presents seventeen of his buildings punctuated by Ancient Roman constructions, suggesting, with its gorgeous compositions, a relationship between the two.

PERRET IN FRANCE AND ALGERIA

Both biography and cultural commentary, Perret tells the story of architectural pioneer Auguste Perret, whose groundbreaking works in two countries are mired in their volatile histories, including Parisian buildings destroyed (and later rebuilt) during WWII. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, this visually stunning documentary presents thirty of Perret's buildings.

MILLA

In a delicate, even generous manner, Milla begins as a story of two young lovers’ life on the fringes before shifting towards one of recent cinema’s finest depictions of motherhood. Valerie Massadian's poetic, startling vision recalls the work of filmmakers like Barbara Loden or Chantal Akerman but remains wholly and fiercely original.

PROTOTYPE (3D)

Hailed as "the most significant 3-D film since Godard’s Goodbye to Language" (Village Voice), Blake Williams' experimental sci-fi masterwork immerses us in the aftermath of the deadly hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas in 1900 to create something entirely new; a haunting treatise on technology, cinema, and the medium’s future.

MY COFFEE WITH JEWISH FRIENDS

A new film from veteran filmmaker Manfred Kirchheimer is always a cause for celebration; with My Coffee, Kirchheimer uses a simple, humorous title as a screen to ask serious questions, from gender inequality to secularism to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, for a deeply thoughtful exploration of contemporary Jewish identity.

MACHORKA-MUFF

A powerful, almost surreal distillation of a story by Heinrich Böll, Straub-Huillet's debut work concerns a former Nazi colonel who takes advantage of his political and sexual status in post-war Germany.

NOT RECONCILED

Straub-Huillet's heralded feature debut eschews conventional form and storytelling to chart the origins and legacy of Nazism, as well as the moral demands of obedience and sacrifice within the German bourgeois family, in this vigorous adaptation of Heinrich Böll’s novel.

MOSES AND AARON

One of Straub-Huillet's major films, this adaptation of Schoenberg’s unfinished opera is a thrilling and rigorous consideration of Biblical and archaeological history; set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force.

PROPOSITION IN FOUR PARTS

Inspired by D. W. Griffith’s 1909 short film A Corner in Wheat, a Biblical tale of avarice, divine retribution, and the prolonged suffering of the masses, Straub-Huillet offer a dialectical montage of cause (capitalist greed) and effect (the poverty of the farmer and the urban underclass).

O SOMMA LUCCE

In darkness, we hear a recording of the scandalous 1954 debut performance of Edgar Varèse’s revolutionary Déserts at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Then, in a different sort of Elysian Field, we hear a recitation of Canto XXXIII from The Inferno.

THE MOTHER

In the sun-dappled Tuscan countryside, the boar hunter Meleager, having been murdered by his own mother to avenge the tragic accidental killing of his brother, engages in conversation about fragility, resistance, and love with Hermes, who has taken female form.

ONE DAY IN ALEPPO

Inspired by questions that followed screenings of Sundance winner Last Men in Aleppo, this short documentary (produced by Last Men director Feras Fayyad) is a portrait of ordinary people's lives as they try to live through a normal day in the besieged city of Aleppo.

NOCTURAMA

A terrorism thriller like no other, recalling Robert Bresson’s The Devil, Probably as much as it does George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, the acclaimed new film from Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent) is one of the 21st century’s most provocative and stirring cinematic experiences.

NIGHT SCHOOL

Emmy-winning director Andrew Cohn’s absorbing documentary observes the individual pursuits of four adult learners seeking a high school diploma, fraught with the challenges of daily life and the broader systemic roadblocks faced by many low income Americans.

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 MARK OF CAIN

Sailing ships, angels and executioners, this classic documentary chronicles the vanishing practice and language of Russian criminal tattoos. Recalling the prison writings of Solzhenitsyn or Dostoevsky, Lambert's harrowingly beautiful and penetrating study served as inspiration for Cronenberg's Eastern Promises.

MY VOICE, MY LIFE

Academy Award winning filmmaker Ruby Yang’s My Voice, My Life follows a group of students from underprivileged families who are cast in a musical theater performance. A moving story about the importance of art education in our schools.

MIMOSAS

Winner of the Critics Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Oliver Laxe’s stunning new film, Mimosas, is a breathtakingly-shot Western that follows a mysterious caravan transporting a dying sheikh into the Moroccan Atlas Mountains.

A MAGICAL SUBSTANCE FLOWS INTO ME

Drawing on the work of German-Jewish ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann (1892-1939), filmmaker Jumana Manna sets out in search of the musical diversity of historical Palestine in this magical documentary.

THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES

In this remarkable documentary, filmmaker Brett Story excavates the often unseen links and connections that prisons – and our system of mass incarceration – have on communities and industries all around us. Widely acclaimed, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is an essential documentary, a portrait of our criminal justice system in which we never see a penitentiary.

PORTRAIT OF A GARDEN

Capturing one year in the life of a historic garden, this magnificent documentary is an ode to nature and the delicate, interdependent relationship between man and the natural world.

ORIENTED

An exceptional, inspirational documentary about three gay Palestinian friends in Tel Aviv who form a non-violent group to fight for gender and national equality.

PARASITE

A film of brilliant, nocturnal beauty from renowned painter and artist Wilhem Sasnal, and his wife, Anka Sasnal.

ON TWO FRONTS: LATINOS AND VIETNAM

The rich and essential history of Latino immigrants in the military, specifically during the Vietnam War.

MINERITA

An acclaimed, award winning documentary about the women of a remote mining town in Bolivia where life above ground is just as dangerous as below.