In this Special Jury Award winner from Sundance, Bing Liu films his friends Zack and Keire over a decade, capturing their skateboarding antics against the backdrop of their faded, blue-collar Illinois hometown. For all three, the community formed via skateboarding has offered refuge from volatile home lives. As they face the increasing responsibilities and complexity […]
Following the death of his emotionally distant father, filmmaker Charlie Tyrell seeks to better understand him through the personal belongings he left behind… including a stack of dirty VHS tapes. Courtesy of New York Times Op-Docs
NYC PREMIERE Did you know Santa Claus keeps a summer home? Established in the late 1940s, upstate New York’s Santa’s Workshop is one of America’s original theme parks, with singing elves, talking trees and secret workshops. This whimsical and nostalgic film documents the park’s idealistic genesis to current-day economic challenges, including a con man who […]
US PREMIERE One of Scotland’s last salmon fishing families is accused of animal rights violations. Constantly followed and recorded by environmental watchdog groups, the Pullar family attempts to pursue its livelihood using hunting practices passed down for generations. Tensions escalate when the government becomes involved. Is there a future for their traditional way of fishing? […]
WORLD PREMIERE Osama and Ayman Abdeldayem are brothers, skateboarders, entrepreneurs, Americans, and Muslims. As they skate through the streets of our nation’s capital, they navigate growing Islamophobia with characteristic style and humor.
US PREMIERE The Other Rio offers a warm and lucid look at the ingenious ways in which a community finds happiness and harmony against the odds. Surviving a harsh existence in Rio de Janeiro, 100 families live as squatters in an abandoned government building in the shadow of the 2016 Olympics’ Maracanã Stadium, under the […]
WORLD PREMIERE Raf’aa flees Syria in the midst of the war, leaving behind her husband, Nazem, and their two sons in order to seek asylum in Europe. The family plans to follow her to Germany, but by the time Nazem and the boys make it to Greece, they find the borders closed. Confined to the […]
Director Rudy Valdez’s sister, Cindy, a married mother of three young girls, long ago left a drug-dealing ex. Despite this, she receives a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison under conspiracy charges related to his crimes. Over a period of ten years, Rudy’s camera captures the moments in his nieces’ lives that Cindy […]
This program presents two films appearing in our Short List: Shorts section recognizing some of the top documentary shorts films of the year. END GAME DIRS: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman A moving film about the passage from life to death, End Game is a portrait of the last days of those in palliative care in […]
This program presents two films appearing in our Short List: Shorts section recognizing some of the top documentary shorts films of the year. SIDELINED DIR: Galen Summer In 1978, inspired by the popularity of NFL cheerleaders, Playboy organized a pictorial feature approved by team management happy for the media exposure. But when the resulting pictures […]