US PREMIERE Filmmaker Alessandro Rossellini explores his complex family and the complicated legacy of his legendary grandfather, director Roberto Rossellini, the “father of Neorealism.” The son of Roberto’s oldest living child, Renzo, and the African American dancer Katherine Cohen, Alessandro previously directed the documentary Viva Ingrid!, profiling his grandfather’s third wife, Ingrid Bergman. Now in […]
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE Using the only known photo of his grandfather, filmmaker Sherman De Jesus illuminates the legacy of prolific photographer James Van Der Zee. Van Der Zee took historic and elegant portraits of the Black community during the Harlem Renaissance when images of Black joy were still rare. De Jesus’s single photograph unspools several proud […]
WORLD PREMIERE Guo Chuan is the first Chinese man to embark on a solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the world. But instead of completing his quest, he went missing. Filmmaker Zhao Qi weaves together Guo Chan’s go-pro footage and his wife’s grief into a tapestry of a man struggling to hold together the happiness of his […]
NYC PREMIERE In the 1900s, Indian men immigrated to Louisiana, often intermarrying with African American women. Fatima, a descendant of this practice, journeys from her New Orleans home to Kolkata, seeking her long-lost forbears. Armed with a handful of faded documents, she struggles with language and suspicion, but the lure of family and the kindness […]
NYC PREMIERE Filmmakers Jerry Risius and Beth Levison celebrate the vitality of local journalism as it undergoes a crisis with this portrait of a small-town Iowa paper, The Storm Lake Times. Editor Art Cullen oversees the family-run business that was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on dark money in corporate agriculture. “Storm […]
US PREMIERE In 2004, director Iván Guarnizo’s mother was abducted by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) for 603 days during its conflict with the Colombian state. Before her death, Ivan’s mother spoke fondly of one particular guerrilla, an acknowledgment he and his brother struggled to understand. Retracing paths from their mother’s journal, the brothers […]
WORLD PREMIERE As the effects of climate change become ever more apparent throughout the world, the Yup’ik people and their lands on the western outskirts of Alaska face a much more imminent threat. In the town of Newtok, years of rising temperatures have eroded the frozen foundation of the area. With their homes and way […]
US PREMIERE Ivanna, a chain-smoking, no-nonsense indigenous Nenets woman, is raising her five children in a house on skis in the Russian arctic. Following Ivanna over four years, Guatemalan-born director Renato Borrayo Serrano gives us a fly-on-the-wall view into Ivanna’s daily life, delivering an unflinching and intimate portrait of this hearty, unflappable woman and a […]
NYC PREMIERE Much like a tale straight from the lyrics of a country-western ballad, Wanita Bahtiyar rises from humble beginnings and makes her way to international stardom in Nashville—or that’s what Australia’s self-proclaimed “Queen of Honky Tonk” would hope will happen. I’m Wanita follows the singer as she attempts an international pilgrimage from Down Under […]
WORLD PREMIERE Yeshi Kassa, great-granddaughter of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, investigates what happened to her beloved father after the 1974 coup that landed most of her family in prison. Looking at a rarely examined slice of history, the film delves into Selassie’s complex legacy, including how he came to be considered a divine being by […]