NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Assembling a diverse group of Middle Eastern women with a shared love of food, Mariam Shaar successfully launches Soufra, her own catering company. What makes her enterprise unique is that Mariam has lived her entire life in Burl El Barajneh, a refugee camp near Beirut, home to everyone on her team. The […]
US PREMIERE Anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and physical and verbal assaults against Jews are on the rise throughout Europe, particularly in France. In response to rising tensions and fears, many in the Jewish community decide to leave. Others, like lawyer Julien, remain behind to fight back against those who would fan the flames of hate, like popular […]
WORLD PREMIERE So an Egyptian lawyer, a couch-surfing custodian and an Orthodox Jew walk into a comedy club… and end up in a documentary. Standing Up follows these three unlikely aspiring stand-up comics, willing to risk everything in pursuit of their dreams of making it in comedy. Director Jonathan Miller tells their story with warmth […]
For her feature debut, a rousing film about young women striving for success, Tony Award-winning producer Amanda Lipitz received a Sundance Film Festival special jury award. Step focuses on three high-school seniors in the inaugural class of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, whose mandate is to send every student to college. Taking inspiration […]
WORLD PREMIERE In Bushwick, where rapid gentrification is pushing out Latino families, a unique alternative after-school program serves as a haven for the community. Led by a former high school teacher disillusioned with mainstream education’s focus on testing, Still Waters in a Storm serves 40 children, ages 5-15, free of charge, and encourages creativity and […]
2017 VIEWFINDERS COMPETITION WINNER INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE Amanda, a 25-year-old single mother, meets the man of her dreams on Facebook. Casper is charming and worldly, and he eventually reveals that he is the sole heir to an outrageous family fortune. Soon enough, the couple moves in together, but Amanda and Casper don’t exactly live happily ever […]
WORLD PREMIERE Doo wop, featuring stellar vocal harmonies sung a cappella, was born on street corners in the 1950s. soon, the Coasters, The Drifters and Frankie Valli were singing their hearts out to America on Alan Freed’s influential radio show. In Streetlight Harmonies, a who’s who of musicians trace the evolution of American pop music […]
Twenty-five years ago, William Ford, an unarmed young black man, was killed after an argument with a white mechanic escalated. William was painted as the aggressor while his killer was set free, unpunished. Director Yance Ford’s carefully composed and starkly personal film simmers with a quiet anger as it dissects the long-lasting impact of his […]
NYC PREMIERE More than a decade after learning she was conceived via a sperm donor, filmmaker Sara Lamm is still on the hunt for her biological father. Using online registries and the scant clues provided by her parents, she is able to track down Jennifer, a woman sharing remarkable similarities who might just possibly be […]
NYC PREMIERE Filmmaker Daniel McCabe examines multiple sides of the fractious war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We meet soldiers, rebels and a diamond merchant known as Mama Romance who allow us to make human connections in a chaotic conflict. This is Congo premiered at the Venice Film Festival where Variety wrote, ‘The film […]