Executive produced by Joshua Oppenheimer, this poignant portrait reveals the dark truth behind Chile’s seemingly idyllic, tourist-friendly German colony, Colonia Dignidad. Led by a cruel cult leader for more than 40 years, it remains the home of several generations of perpetrators and victims, inexplicably coexisting without reckoning with decades of abuse. Filmmakers Marianne Hougen-Moraga and […]
US PREMIERE | Just outside of Beijing, the city of Langfang is on the front lines of China’s fight against air pollution. The local environmental protection bureau and its intrepid deputy chief—affectionately called “Uncle Smog Buster” by local school kids—are tasked with navigating Beijing’s strict national policy and the interests of local politicians and businesses. In […]
Runner Up: Audience Award DOC NYC 2020 Kimonti Carter is serving life without parole in a Washington state prison based on a harsh 1990s three-strikes law, but rather than accept this condemnation, he has worked to transform inmates’ lives through education. His experience brilliantly elucidates the dehumanization and trauma that accompany incarceration, but also demonstrates […]
WORLD PREMIERE | What do humans need to be happy, healthy, and sane? A crew of six non-astronauts from all over the world, chosen for their ability to survive isolation, embark on a one-year mission in the Mars simulation station in Hawai’i in order to provide much-needed research for the future of space exploration. Survive, […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE | An epic self-portrait of Ulrike Ottinger, one of Germany’s most prominent contemporary avant-garde artists, known for her paintings, photographs, and, above all, her films. An impressive and extensive archive of sensorial memories, historical photographs, and documentary footage traces the early influences of Ottinger’s life in Paris in the 1960s. This was […]
At the edge of Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo is the small floating village of Congo Mirador. Now sinking into sediment, this once-prosperous fishing community is unraveling after years of criminal pollution and government neglect. Focusing on two fierce, independent women who epitomize opposing sides of this vulnerable community, Anabel Rodríguez Ríos’s film is a stunning microcosm […]
For decades, the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton was framed as the sensationalistic story of an ambitious woman passing as a man in pursuit of a music career. Now that history gets re-interrogated by trans artists as they try to reimagine Tipton’s life through acts of performance, reclaiming him as a trans icon. […]
WORLD PREMIERE | At the height of the Cold War, the CIA is tasked with an audacious covert mission: recovering a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the bottom of the ocean. The mission hangs in the balance as the agency and its activities are caught in a power play between the press and the White […]
WORLD PREMIERE | Dash Snow rejected a life of privilege to make his own way as an artist on the streets of downtown New York City in the late 1990s. Developing from a notorious graffiti tagger into an international art star, he documented his drug- and alcohol-fueled nights with the surrogate family he formed with […]
Just 70 miles north of the Mexican-US border is a land haunted by ghosts. Brooks County, Texas is a barren landscape designed as a deterrent to illegal crossings, but people continue to attempt to cross, and many die trying. The municipality lacks the resources to properly deal with this sad reality, and the numbers keep […]