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One of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year, Sugarcane is a stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life. In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada. After years of silence, the forced separation, assimilation and abuse many children experienced at these segregated boarding schools was brought to light, sparking a national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities.

SOMNILOQUIES

In their film Somniloquies, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel overcome the boundaries between inner dreamscapes and human bodies. Songwriter Dion McGregor became famous in the 1960’s for narrating his dreams in his sleep. His flatmate recorded him doing so. A roving camera that moves indiscernibly from one contour and orifice to another, one body to another, one gender to another, one ethnicity to another, one animal to another. Somniloquies is a descent into the dream-world of our unconscious.

THIS RAIN WILL NEVER STOP

This Rain Will Never Stop takes the audience on a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace. The film follows 20-year-old Andriy Suleyman as he tries to secure a sustainable future while navigating the human toll of armed conflict. From the Syrian civil war to strife in Ukraine, Andriy’s existence is framed by the seemingly eternal flow of peace and violence.

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?

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.

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 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

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.

SEXUAL HEALING

A wondrous and important film about the necessity of intimate human contact for every human being. Evelien, spastic from birth, and only knowing disappointing sexual experiences, is taking the first steps on her quest for intimacy. After a lifetime of mostly clinical forms of touch, she sets out to claim sexual pleasure. On her journey, Evelien discovers new parts of her body and self, as she gradually opens to the needs and desires she has been suppressing, having been told sexual touch shouldn’t matter due to her disability.

REWIND AND PLAY

In 1969, at the end of a European tour, Thelonious Monk was invited to appear on a television program, where he would perform and answer questions in an intimate studio stage. Using newly discovered footage, filmmaker Alain Gomis reveals the troubling dynamic between Monk and his white interviewer. Gomis’s gripping film is a fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary; a subtle yet searing exposé of casual racism; and, above all, a chance to see one of the monumental geniuses of 20th-century music at work.

STONEBREAKERS

Stonebreakers chronicles the conflicts around monuments that arose in the United States during the George Floyd protests and the 2020 presidential election and continue to reverbate in towns and cities across the country. As statues of Columbus, Confederates and Founding Fathers fall from their pedestals and triumphalist myths are called into question, this film interrogates the link between history and political action in a nation that must confront its past now more urgently than ever.

RESOURCES

The meat industry is booming in Canada, where huge factories use standardized production methods to convert vast herds of livestock into meat. They hire asylum seekers, mainly from Latin America, so they can continue to produce at competitive rates. This observational film splits its focus between the workers and the animals, considering the living conditions of both, while providing a subtle yet critical look at a world driven by capitalism and the links in the chain that make this possible.

TO THE MOON

A cinematic ode to the moon composed of numerous film clips (from over 25 countries, filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, F.W. Murnau, Carl Theodor Dreyer and many others), archival footage, literary fragments and original moonlit cinematography filmed across five continents, To The Moon travels through the ages and ideas that people have drawn from the moon to create a meditative work of timeless resonance. "Gorgeous, a beautifully succinct visual essay." – The Guardian

RED AFRICA

A fascinating and insightful documentary, Red Africa relates the history of the influence exerted by the USSR over many African states between 1960 and 1990. Incorporating extraordinary archival footage filmed by Soviet operators, excerpts from official speeches by Soviet and African leaders and audio recording made by Soviet filmmakers during their African expeditions, Red Africa reveals the hidden agenda of the USSR which, under the cloak of generosity, was aspiring to expand its socialist “paradise."

THE RETURN: LIFE AFTER ISIS

This moving documentary offers an intimate yet candid portrait of a group of Western women who devoted their young lives to ISIS, but who now want to be given the chance to rebuild their lives back at home, including Shamima Begum (UK) and Hoda Muthana (US), who made worldwide headlines when they left their countries as teenagers to join ISIS. These women now tell their stories for the very first time in this "stirring and vitally humane" (Variety) film.

SLOW RETURN

Slow Return travels up the Rhône, from one end to the other. Between the fishermen of Salin-de-Giraud and the Rhône glacier, filmmaker Philip Cartelli has numerous encounters and examines the relationship the population maintains with the river. Blending archive images with new technologies, the film composes a sensitive archaeology of the natural environment, while also casting a delicate gaze over a time that seems long gone.

SLOW MACHINE

After her relationship with NYPD intelligence agent Gerard ends terribly, tired and disillusioned actress Stephanie hides in a house where a band is working on a record, which proves to be less of an escape than she imagined. Deftly lensed in 16mm and unfurling as a digressive, tantalizingly off-kilter mystery, Slow Machine is a fascinating work pitched at the intersection of American independent cinema and the avant-garde theater of Richard Foreman and the Wooster Group.

TRUE CONVICTION

There's a new detective agency in Dallas, run by three exonerated men who all spent decades in prison. Their mission: to free other innocent people still behind bars.True Conviction follows these change-makers as they rebuild their lives and families, learn to investigate cases, work to support each other, and campaign to fix the criminal justice system.

SOMETHING, ANYTHING

From award-winning filmmaker Paul Harrill (Light From Light) Something, Anything is both a meditative character study and an unconventional romance. When a tragedy shatters her plans for domestic bliss, a seemingly typical Southern newlywed gradually transforms into a spiritual seeker, quietly threatening the closest relationships around her.

A SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Sundog lives out in the Sonora Desert on the Mexican border. He is an elderly gentleman, who lives off anything that the brutal nature gives him, be it a wild boar or the psychedelic poison of a toad. With the desert as the ultimate existential (and cinematic) setting, A Shape of Things to Come from directors Lisa Marie Malloy and J.P. Sniadecki shows the relationship between humanity and nature at a critical time, when civil disobedience is the provocative answer to the most pressing questions.

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.

STEVENSON: LOST AND FOUND

As one of the New Yorker’s most prolific cartoonists, James Stevenson’s body of work spans five decades, countless drawings and innumerable laughs. Featuring delightful animated interludes and interviews from colleagues, editors and his nine children, this wonderful look at Stevenson’s life - who also wrote a column for The New York Times and is a noted writer of children's books - is a testament to observing the world from an original perspective.

SACAVÉM: THE FILMS OF PEDRO COSTA

A journey through the films of Pedro Costa, focusing on such works as Casa de Lava, Colossal Youth, In Vanda's Room and Horse Money. Incorporating clips from his films, and emphasizing the unique visual and aural landscapes he creates, along with his own reflections, Sacavem provides unique insight into one of the most powerful and singular bodies of work in contemporary cinema.

THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL

Ada, just 19 years old, went to the house of a young man she knew. She didn’t fight back and it all happened very quickly, but the trauma remains. With humility and frankness, this powerful documentary tackles the delicate and intimate matter of rape. Through a diversity of experiences and perspectives, it examines stubborn prejudices without sanctimony or condescension, provoking the sort of collective introspection - and discussion - the #MeToo movement has necessitated.

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.

THOSE THAT, AT A DISTANCE, RESEMBLE ANOTHER

Extending from filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland's ongoing research into natural habitats and various forms of preservation, this exquisite documentary traces, with sinuosity and exactitude the production of a lab-engineered replica of an elephant tusk dating from the late 19th century. The film gradually opens up to reflections on ecological and museological conservation, fabrication materials, and authenticity.

THY KINGDOM COME

Initially intended as brief episodes for Terence Malick's To The Wonder which captured Javier Bardem (a parish priest in the film) talking with real-life residents of an Oklahoma town, this documentary project grew in scope as the townspeople, wholly aware that Bardem was a fictional priest, chose to share personal details of their lives. Thy Kingdom Come is a revelatory work in which unscripted conversations, shot by photographer and filmmaker Eugene Richards in beautiful widescreen, come to reveal the complexity of life in this small oil town.

SEGUNDA VEZ

This vital, revolutionary documentary isn't merely a biopic of Oscar Masotta - a pivotal theorist in the Argentinian avant-garde from the 1950s to 1970s - but a treatise on the artistic and political climate of the nation preceding the Dirty War, eerily mirroring the world today. The title, Segunda Vez, originates from a homonymous story written by a contemporary of Masotta’s, Julio Cortázar.

SUNRISE/SUNSET

Shot in elegiac black and white, the romantic, wistful medium length Sunrise/Sunset, captures a college student's brief visit to New York from South Korea; recontextualizing all-too-familiar landmarks—Washington Square Park, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge—while subtly exploring the liminal space not only between cultures, but between the possibilities of adolescence and the realities of adulthood.

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.

TONY CONRAD: COMPLETELY IN THE PRESENT

From performing in Jack Smith’s legendary Flaming Creatures to creating a series of groundbreaking experimental films to playing a pivotal role in the formation of The Velvet Underground, Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present, twenty-two years in the making, examines the pioneering life and work of artist, musician, and educator, Tony Conrad.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL SHORTS COLLECTION 2018

Five visionary short films selected from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, widely considered to be the premier showcase for shorts, and the launchpad, for more than 30 years, of many now-prominent independent filmmakers.. Grasshopper is proud to present the 2018 collection, Fauve, winner of the Short Film Special Jury Award, and Matria, winner of the Short Film Grand Jury Prize.

TRIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS: Films by Akosua Adoma Owusu

Akosua Adoma Owusu is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker, producer and cinematographer whose award-winning work addresses the collision of identities, and themes such as feminism, queerness and African immigrants interacting in African, white American, and black American culture. This edition presents thirteen of her short films.

THE TRIAL

A riveting behind-the-scenes look at the impeachment trial of Brazil's first female President, Dilma Rousseff. Granted unique access to the defense team, senators and President Rousseff herself, this explosive documentary captures this profound political crisis while reflecting on the dangers facing so many democracies throughout the world.

TOWARDS MATHILDE

Presented in the US for the first time, from filmmaker director Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Shots of Rum, Let the Sunshine In), Towards Mathilde utilizes sumptuous 8mm and 16mm cinematography, striking performances and the music by PJ Harvey to craft a singular documentary portrait of choreographer and dancer Mathilde Monnier.

RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE

Louisiana has suffered from hurricanes, flooding and oil spills, but nothing has been as insidious as the nutria. This giant swamp rat, known for its orange buckteeth, is prone to tunneling and eating plant roots, threatening the fragile wetlands. Rodents follows the sometimes peculiar efforts of Gulf residents as they try to defend their imperiled land from this invasive species.

STREETSCAPES [DIALOGUE]

A director speaks at length to a psychoanalyst, confiding his obsessions, fears, ideas about cinema, and creative blocks. Based on his own six-day psychoanalytic treatment with trauma specialist Zohar Rubinstein, Heinz Emigholz’s latest masterwork is a demonstration of his singular working methods, and a playful, moving treatise on trauma and architecture.

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.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL SHORTS COLLECTION 2017

Six innovative, surprising short films selected from the Sundance Film Festival, widely considered to be the premier showcase for shorts, and the launchpad of many now-prominent independent filmmakers. Grasshopper is proud to present the 2017 collection, which includes two Jury Award winners and Come Swim, the directorial debut of actress Kristen Stewart.

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.

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.

TOO EARLY/TOO LATE

A major influence on contemporary filmmakers, consisting entirely of a sequence of landscape shots, Straub-Huillet's Too Early / Too Late reflects on Egypt’s history of peasant struggle and liberation from Western colonization, linking it to class tensions in France shortly before the Revolution of 1789.

SICILIA!

Something as simple as a herring roasting on a hearth, or a meal of bread, wine and winter melon, takes on the humble aura of a Caravaggio painting in Straub-Huillet's masterful tragicomedy about Sicilians who are poor of means but rich in spirit. “A passionate and wide-ranging masterwork by Straub and Huillet." (The New Yorker). New 20th anniversary digital restoration.

THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON/HUMILIATED

Straub-Huillet take as their inspiration the 1949 novel Women of Messina by the Sicilian writer Elio Vittorini, whose courageous wartime work in the underground Communist resistance press led to his imprisonment by the Fascists.

THESE ENCOUNTERS OF THEIRS

In Straub-Huillet's last feature length collaboration before Huillet's death in 2006, villagers gather in the Tuscan countryside to recite scenes from Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, a series of meditations on human destiny, both comical and tragic, between ancient Greek mythological figures.

A TALE BY MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Left for dead in a freak horse accident, Montaigne reflects on many things, among them the nature of consciousness and the soul, reason and automatism, waking and dreaming, the self and the other.

THE STRAUB-HUILLET COLLECTION

Hailed by critics, academics and filmmakers, the world has never seen a collaboration like that between Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, a fiercely intellectual husband-wife duo whose work aimed to spark a revolution among the masses. Encompassing nearly 50 films, the collection includes many works never before available in the U.S..

SPETTACOLO

From the directors of Marwencol, Spettacolo tells the story of a small town in Tuscany that came up with a remarkable way to confront their issues – they turned their lives into a play. Every summer for the past 50 years, their piazza has become their stage and residents of all ages play a part – the role of themselves.

RAILWAY SLEEPERS

The first railway line in Thailand was inaugurated in 1893 – a sign of progress and prosperity. Shot over eight years on every active line of the railway system, this extraordinary documentary, produced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, offers an unprecedented immersion into the country’s past and present.

SARAH WINCHESTER, PHANTOM OPERA

A film about ghosts and madness that is itself a kind of ghost, this short from master Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama, Saint Laurent) tells the story of Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune who was driven to insanity by unseen forces.

THE STAIRS

Shot over the course of five years, Hugh Gibson's award-winning documentary examines the lives of habitual drug users at an urban health center staffed by both former and current users; expanding into a wide-ranging portrait of the conditions that can nurture addiction and the social and legal structures that surround it.

RETURN TO CUBA: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF WALKER EVANS

In his first commissioned body of work, Walker Evans travelled to Cuba in 1933 to document life under the Machado regime. Nearly 75 years later, renowned photographers return to Cuba to retrace Evans' footsteps at a new historical tipping point.

SCRAP VESSEL

Using found snapshots, diary entries and 16mm Chinese melodramas, filmmaker Jason Byrne resurrects the ghosts of a decommissioned cargo ship - once used to carry coal along the Yangtze - as it crosses the Indian Ocean to be salvaged for scrap.

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.

A TRAIN ARRIVES AT THE STATION

Beginning with Ozu's 1936 The Only Son, Thom Andersen's latest cinematic treat, a documentary short, is an anthology of train arrivals, comprising 26 scenes from movies, 1904-2015.

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.

SAPPHIRE OF ST. LOUIS

In this wondrous documentary, celebrated filmmaker Jose Luis Guerin peers inside an 18th century painting hidden away in a French cathedral to vividly recount a little-known, but pivotal slave revolt on the high seas.

TREND BEACONS

An in-depth look at the secretive world of trend forecasting - how a small group of individuals predict (or in some cases, engineer), the cultural and social trends of tomorrow.

TAKE WHAT YOU CAN CARRY

The first film made outside his native Baltimore, a luminous short film exploring place, character and transition from filmmaker Matt Porterfield (Putty Hill).

THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD

A richly digressive journey through cinematic history from master cinematic essayist Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself).

TASKAFA, STORIES OF THE STREET

With readings by John Berger, Taskafa offers a brilliantly incisive meditation on urban space and city life by investigating the complex history of Istanbul’s street dogs.

STARTING POINT

A pilot program in which female prisoners work at a nursing home for the elderly and disabled while serving out their sentences.

STORM CHILDREN

With striking b&w photography, this acclaimed documentary from Philippine master Lav Diaz takes stock of the devastation caused by typhoon Yolanda.

SONG OF THE CICADAS

An evocative short documentary that juxtaposes the solitude and transformation of a political prisoner with the cicada, an insect that spends 17 years underground.

RIGHT NOW WRONG THEN

A film director falls for a young painter - twice - in this acclaimed masterpiece from celebrated filmmaker Hong Sangsoo.