Science

Weaving together accounts of rural workers and field notes of archaeologists, amateur footage and scientific drawings, legends, poems and songs, The Seasons is a magical journey through the real history and the tales of a region in southern Portugal, Alentejo, and a portrait of the people who have lived there. Directed by Maureen Fazendeiro, whose previous film was the acclaimed The Tsugua Diaries, co-directed with Miguel Gomes (Grand Tour, Tabu)

ELEMENTAL

Directed by award-winning and emerging filmmakers from around the world, Elemental is a thought-provoking series of short documentaries that explore our lives through the elements of the periodic table. There are as many stories about how the elements touch our lives as there are creative ways to portray them, and the collection champions films from across the wide spectrum of creative documentary approaches.

SAVING THE GREAT SWAMP: BATTLE TO DEFEAT THE JETPORT

Saving The Great Swamp: Battle to Defeat the Jetport chronicles the events, people, and politics behind the 1959–1968 struggle to preserve a little-known rural area of New Jersey known as the Great Swamp after the Port of New York Authority announced plans to build a 10,000-acre jetport that would have obliterated entire towns, destroyed the aquifer and wildlife destroyed, and a threatened a way of life for thousands.

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."

CORONER TO THE STARS

Coroner to the Stars chronicles the extraordinary journey of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the former Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner whose groundbreaking high-profile autopsies of icons like Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy, and Natalie Wood thrust him into the spotlight - even as Hollywood elites and political adversaries sought to silence him - and forever shaped American culture.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES

Set in the small desert town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the film takes place in the shadow of the world's first commercial Spaceport. Subtly set in a near future when space travel has begun, the film follows five residents in the town - Yvonne, Olin, Katie, Philip and George. Anchored in observational documentary footage filmed over three years, the film weaves together archival, virtual reality worlds, and an improvised score by Bill Frisell.

LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR

The new film from the critically-acclaimed filmmaker of Museum Hours, Jem Cohen's Little, Big, and Far follows an astronomer, Karl, who is at a crossroads in his life and work. After a conference in Greece, he decides not to return home and instead heads for a small island in hopes of finding a sky dark enough to reconnect with the stars. Blending documentary and fiction, this luminous film is a transcendent meditation on science, the cosmos, and our place within it.

HOLDING BACK THE TIDE

A "wondrous and wonderful documentary" (The New York Times) that traces the oyster through its many life cycles in New York, once the world’s oyster capital. Now their specter haunts the city through queer characters embodying ancient myth, discovering the overlooked history and biology of the bivalve that built the city.

FOLLOW THE WATER

Demand for lithium, which is needed for the massive batteries of electric cars, is unprecedented. But what impact is this having on the environment and the people who live and work next to these lithium mines? In this timely and absorbing documentary, several protaganists talk about their connection to one of the largest lithium mines in the world: from the efforts of an indigenous woman fighting for water rights to new questions being raised by leading scientists.

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.

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.

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.

76 DAYS

On January 23rd, 2020, China locked down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, to combat the emerging COVID-19 outbreak. Set deep inside the frontlines of the crisis in four hospitals, 76 Days tells indelible human stories at the center of this pandemic. These raw and intimate stories bear witness to the death and rebirth of a city under a 76-day lockdown, and to the human resilience that persists in times of profound tragedy.

GREY MATTER

A deeply human documentary dealing with personal aspects of the medical process, director Jan Louter follows two neurosurgeons during the treatments of various patients with brain disorders, a very intensive process for both surgeon and patient during which – besides life and death – personality, the essence of the patient, is at stake.

HEALERS

By examining bodies and exploring the corners of the human psyche, Healers draws the contours of tomorrow's medicine, and weaves a portrait of a rapidly changing healthcare system. At the intersection of generations and practices, the film questions the vocation and profound meaning of caring for others, and focuses on the human dimension of medicine in a system undergoing great change.

BOREALIS

A unique cinematic documentary that travels deep into the heart of Canada’s iconic wilderness to explore how the plants and animals that live there communicate and survive the destructive forces of fire, insects, and human encroachment. Borealis calls on the voices of scientists, Indigenous people, and environmentalists to make clear the urgent need for greater understanding and alliances with the natural 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.

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.

FOOD EVOLUTION

Amidst a polarized debate marked by passion, suspicion and confusion, this fascinating documentary – narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson and directed by Oscar-nominee Scott Hamilton Kennedy – explores the controversy surrounding GMOs and food. Travelling from the cornfields of Iowa to banana farms in Uganda, Food Evolution brings a fresh perspective to one of the most critical issues facing global society today.

SHE STARTED IT

An essential documentary on women tech entrepreneurs, She Started It upends the popular perception of a male-dominated Silicon Valley. Featuring interviews with leading female CEO's and entrepreneurs, it follows four passionate, trailblazing young women as they strive to launch their companies in the ruthlessly competitive world of high tech start-ups.

WOMAN AND THE GLACIER

For more than 35 years, scientist Aušra Revutaite has lived alone atop the Tuyuksu glacier studying the effects of climate change. This remarkable documentary, pulsing with an otherworldly beauty, captures her everyday life and work.

SYNESTHESIA

Can one taste a color or see a sound? This fascinating short documentary explores the brain and a neuro-cognitive phenomenon known as synesthesia where multiples senses are blended together.

IN LIMBO

Does the Internet dream with our electric memories? What happens to all those photos and videos we upload? A poetic exploration of time, memory and technology.

UNSEEN: THE LIVES OF LOOKING

A revelatory documentary exploring the physical act of looking; from the work of an eye surgeon to a NASA explorer to a human rights lawyer.