Anthropology

In the hills of northeast India, far from the Indian mainland and mainstream consciousness, there is a village of the Naga community called Tora. Years of neglect coupled with a long history of insurgency have meant that basic civic amenities are conspicuous by their absence.

Seventy years after Indian independence, the people hear that electricity is finally on its way. They are wary as they have been let down too often in the past. Khamrang, the grand old man of the village, watches with a skeptical eye. His real dream is to see his people attain sovereignty. Jasmine, a pragmatic woman, sees an opportunity in the coming of electricity. Does electricity arrive in Tora? Does it bring the promised joy?

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHASING STORMS

The tornado is both a destructive event and a uniquely American icon, one often fraught with collective tragedy. With wit and humour, this film unfolds like an episodic road movie, raising questions of memory, inequality, colonization, climate change, and disaster capitalism as it examines legacies of weather within this area of the United States dubbed “tornado alley."

HOUSE WITH A VOICE

House With a Voice tells the story of six Burrneshas -- women who take a vow of chastity and live as men in patriarchal northern Albanian society. They have done this to circumvent patriarchal structures, to avoid misogynistic attacks, to support the family economically, to avoid compelled marriage, and to be free. The film turns stereotypes and projections of gender discussions upside down.

COLLECTIVE MONOLOGUE

A beautifully atmospheric documentary that portrays the complex, multisensorial interactions between animals and their carers across a community of zoos and animal rescue centers in Argentina. But as the histories of these institutions slowly unfold, Collective Monologue — which includes amazing 16mm and nocturnal surveillance footage — reveals a parallel inquiry into questions of labor, gender, and colonial conquest over the natural world.

OZOGOCHE

In the Ecuadorian Andes, the Ozogoche community await the Cuvivíes, culturally celebrated birds who, inexplicably, migrate from North America annually to commit suicide in nearby lakes. However, it is the journey in reverse the Ozogoche people are now making more and more. With stunning photography, this film intertwines both of these journeys in a powerful metaphor about cultural identity, climate change, immigration and the fleeting beauty of the Ecuadorian highlands.

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.

LEVIATHAN

A 10th anniversary re-release of one of the most acclaimed documentaries of the 21st century, Leviathan is a thrilling, immersive documentary that takes you deep inside the dangerous world of commercial fishing. Set aboard a hulking fishing vessel as it navigates the treacherous waves off the New England coast - the very waters that once inspired "Moby Dick" - it captures the harsh, unforgiving world of the fishermen in starkly haunting, yet beautiful detail.

SHORT FILMS BY THE YANOMAMI

The three short films in this series inaugurate the new audiovisual production of the Yanomami, one of the largest Indigenous groups living in Amazonia today. They are produced by Yanomami young people as part of a group specifically formed to disseminate their traditions and teachings to Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous people. The first film is made with the participation of the great leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa. The other two are the first to be directed by Yanomami women.

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.

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.

DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA

Five centuries ago, anatomist André Vésale opened up the human body to science for the first time in history. Today, De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens the human body to the cinema. In their thrilling new work of nonfiction exploration, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Leviathan) burrow deeper than ever, using microscopic cameras and specially designed recording devices to survey the wondrous landscape of the human body.

AS FAR AS THEY CAN RUN

An intimate, unflinching look at children with intellectual disabilities in rural Pakistan who have been deemed "useless" by their communities. A searing "verité" portrait of three young teenagers who manage to find some acceptance and a place in society through sports. As Far As They Can Run is a moving documentary that offers an insightful window into the world of Special Olympics and the impact this event has on a community.

DRY GROUND BURNING

An electrifying portrait of Brazil’s dystopian contemporary moment that blends documentary with narrative fiction and genre elements, Dry Ground Burning presents a daring vision of the country’s possible future. The film is set in the Sol Nascente favela in Brasilia, where fearsome outlaw Chitara leads an all-female gang that siphons and steals precious oil from the authoritarian, militarized government, while her sister, Léa, recently released from prison, is brought into the criminal enterprise.

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.

BAATO

Every winter Mikma and her family travel by foot from their village deep in the Himalaya of Nepal to sell local medicinal plants in urban markets. This year, construction of a new highway to China has begun in their roadless valley, and things are never going to be the same. With the new road will come new challenges, new opportunities, and ultimately a new way of being to those who live along its path.

ANERCA, BREATH OF LIFE

Anerca is a fascinating exploration into the breathing techniques of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. There are two types of breathing, life-sustaining breath, and that which expresses existence. The film composes a poetic ethnography inspired by the singing, dancing, forms of contemporary existence and, above all, the vital breath of these nomad communities mistreated by history.

THE AMERICAN SECTOR

Universal Studios in Florida, a Hilton Hotel in Dallas, Museum of World Treasures in Kansas, and private homes in the Hollywood Hills are just some of the places that slabs of the Berlin wall have ended up on display. From coast to coast, The American Sector documents the present remnants of the wall’s architecture while evoking the past with home video footage, offering a new perspective on history, what we ascribe to it, and how easily it is scattered.

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.

HENRY GLASSIE: FIELD WORK

The worldwide travels and unique cultural finds of renowned American folklorist Henry Glassie are enthrallingly chronicled in this portrait. Field Work allows us to witness the walling up of a massive kiln in Piedmont, North California, and features archival recordings of Glassie's encounters with carpet weavers and ceramicists in Western Turkey, and storytellers in Collins and Hogan's home country of Ireland, where Glassie's subjects reflect on their troubled present by talking about the past.

SWEETGRASS

NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION. An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.

BARBS WASTELANDS

At the end of the 19th century the peasants in Portugal started a courageous struggle for better work conditions. After generations of starving misery, the Carnation Revolution sowed the promise of an Agrarian Reform. Mostly in the Alentejo region, these rural workers occupied the huge properties where they were once submitted to the power of their Masters. The protagonists of this film, resistants of this struggle, tell their story to the youngsters of today, in their own words.

SHAKEDOWN

A riveting documentary, Shakedown is the story of Los Angeles’ black lesbian strip club scene and its genesis. It's focus is the club Shakedown, owned and operated by women, underground and illegal in nature. Created from over 400 hours of footage that filmmaker Leilah Weinraub has been collecting for the past 15 years, the film incorporates live tapes, performances, backstage videos, archival material, flyers, and interviews. Shakedown is a window into this world.

THE HOTTEST AUGUST

What does the future look like from where we are standing? The focus of this extraordinary documentary – filmmaker Brett Story’s follow-up to her critically-acclaimed The Prison in Twelve Landscapes – is one city over one month (New York during August 2017), a month heavy with the tension of a new President, growing anxiety over rising rents, marching white nationalists, and unrelenting news of wildfires and hurricanes. Empathetic and incisive, The Hottest August offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation at a unique moment in time.

SWARM SEASON

The extinction of honey bees on a remote volcanic island of Hawaii, indigenous cosmology, and a secret NASA project intersect in this gorgeous, thought-provoking documentary. With an artist's eye for details and plenty of time for amazement, Swarm Season draws fascinating parallels between the micro- and macrocosm, and challenges our understanding of nature, the world and ourselves.

EVERY PULSE OF THE HEART IS WORK

Filmed across India, the central theme of Paweł Wojtasik’s (End of Life) stunning new documentary is work. With a patient, unobtrusive approach, it consists of transcendent portraits of a broad spectrum of laborers, from a surgeon to a priest to a masseur, forming a composite vision of society, where each has a place in the tangled web of human endeavor.

BLACK MOTHER

A visionary filmmaker and photographer, Khalik Allah exploded onto the scene with Field Niggas (2015), a grassroots production which went from a YouTube upload to a sensation on the festival circuit. In his celebrated follow-up, Black Mother, Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica, the land of his mother's birth, informed by the island's turbulent history yet existing in the urgent present.

ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT

A stirring and beautiful documentary from Academy Award nominated director James Longley (Iraq in Fragments), Angels Are Made of Light traces the lives of young students and their teachers at a school in the old city of Kabul. Interweaving the modern history of Afghanistan with present-day portraits, the film offers an intimate and nuanced vision of a society living in the shadow of war.

KOKA, THE BUTCHER

The legendary pigeon races of Cairo are captured on film for the first time in Koka, The Butcher, an award-winning short documentary which introduces viewers to a wondrous and peculiar world where pigeons are trained to compete in sky battles among rival neighborhoods for prizes, cash and bragging rights.

UPPLAND

In the late 1950s, a large American-Swedish company established a mining operation in the remote highlands of Liberia and built a sprawling, modernist city, a “true America,” for its employees and their families. Today, all that remain are abandoned buildings and empty pools. Exactly what happened involves mythical beasts, the environment, the promise of industrialization, and the last remnants of colonialism.

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.

SMALL PEOPLE, BIG TREES

Famed anthropologist Louis Sarno discovered the music of the Bayaka pygmies nearly 30 years ago and dedicated his life to their study and preservation. Following Sarno’s death in 2017, the filmmakers travelled to the rain forests of Central Africa to live with the Bayaka and provide a crucial ethnographic portrait of their cultures and traditions under seige from Western influence.

A RIVER BELOW

A captivating documentary about the ethics of activism in the modern media age, A River Below examines the efforts of two conservationists in the Amazon – one, a marine biologist, the other, an animal activist and host of a popular National Geographic TV show – whose methods to save the mythical pink river dolphin from extinction trigger unforeseen consequences.

LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD

Voiced and executive produced by Tilda Swinton, Letters from Baghdad is a visually rich, beautifully crafted documentary that tells the story of Gertrude Bell, who, more influential than her friend and colleague Lawrence of Arabia, shaped the modern Middle East in ways that still reverberate today.

EL REMOLINO (THE SWIRL)

In recent years, the town of El Remolino in Chiapas, Mexico has suffered from some of the country's worst flooding. This lyrical documentary surveys the social and ecological impact, from schools that can't open to farms that can no longer operate.

KIVALINA

This tender portrait of an Inupiaq Eskimo community who are living on an island that is disappearing into the sea is both an elegy to the indigenous cultures of the Arctic and a harrowing vision of climate change in America.

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.

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

THE RIDE

This intimate, moving documentary follows young Lakota riders on a 300-mile trek on horseback through the South Dakota badlands, as they retrace the fateful journey of their ancestors that culminated at Wounded Knee.

JUKE

A remarkable record of black life in the 1940s, as found in the films of Spencer Williams, the pioneering African American filmmaker. A new essay by Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself.

BOONE

The final year in the life of a small farm in Southern Oregon is vividly captured in this study of a way of life quickly disappearing due to strict government regulations and competition from corporate farms.

BANANA PANCAKES AND THE CHILDREN OF STICKY RICE

When an isolated village in rural Laos becomes a popular destination for Western tourists, it exposes, in microcosm, the economic and social challenges of our modernizing world.

DAUGHTERS OF ANATOLIA

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

FISH TAIL

The impact of global industrial overfishing on a small community of fishermen in the Azores is explored in this intimate, beautiful documentary.