NYC PREMIERE Moved by the plight of desperate women in countries with restrictive reproductive rights, Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts founded Women on Waves, which uses laws governing international waters to bring much-needed abortion and contraceptive services to those with no other recourse. Despite a quagmire of legal, religious, political and logistical obstacles, Gomperts and her […]
Santa Cruz del Islote is less than three acres large and is one of the world’s most densely populated islands. This remote but family-like community resides fifty miles from Cartagena, Colombia. Such isolation has provided a peaceful existence for generations, but sufficient resources are becoming increasingly scarce. This short documentary explores the daily lives of […]
NYC PREMIERE In equal measures inspiring and endearing, Leslie Chilcott’s film spotlights a group of Costa Rican village women who, seeking a way to offset the economically motivated flight of their husbands and sons from the community, form ASOMOBI, a coffee-growing collective—despite not knowing the first thing about growing coffee. Persevering through a steep […]
How does one claim an identity in a vacuum? Living in Poland, the four young women in Adam Zucker’s engaging film learned of their Jewish roots after growing up Catholic. Defining themselves through their difference, they feel like pioneers in a country that was once the epicenter of the Jewish world. But as life takes […]
WORLD PREMIERE A Tibetan teenager travels from Minneapolis to India to compete in a most unlikely beauty pageant. Long separated from their ancient homeland, Tibet’s exile community struggles to maintain a sense of tradition in the face of modernity, emblematic in the contradictions of the Miss Tibet pageant. While its suave organizer insists that he […]
NYC PREMIERE Exploring the intersection of economic development, environmental impact and globalization, Mark Grieco’s film is an intimate and richly observed portrait of Marmato, a rural mining town threatened with destruction. At the center of a new global gold rush, the Colombian government has imperiled Marmato by selling its mines to a Canadian company. With […]
NYC PREMIERE Offering animation fans a rare look inside Japan’s Studio Ghibli, this fascinating film profiles its most famous creators, Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle), and his friendly rival and business partner, Isao Takahata (Pom Poko). As both men work on their swan songs—Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises and Takahata’s The Tale of The […]
WORLD PREMIERE While polio had been all but eliminated since the development of vaccines in the 1950s, the debilitating disease has shown a resurgence in Pakistan. After the Taliban bans polio vaccinations and spreads misinformation about sinister conspiracies to frighten the masses, the country suffers devastating outbreaks of the disease, prompting strategic problem-solving from the […]
WORLD PREMIERE New Jersey’s WFMU has occupied a unique position as an independent, commercial-free, listener-supported radio station since its inception in the late 1950s. At its heart is the dedicated station manager Ken Freedman, committed to an unstructured, free- form broadcasting model which has won WFMU acclaim as the best—and perhaps weirdest— radio station in […]
WORLD PREMIERE With his execution just 48 hours away, Anthony Porter’s life was saved by a Northwestern University journalism class. Their re-investigation of the crime for which he was convicted—a double homicide in a Chicago park—led to the discovery of the real killer, Alstory Simon, whose confession exonerated Porter. If it all sounds too […]