NYC PREMIERE In this Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winning film, director Talal Derki (Return to Homs) returns to his native Syria and gains remarkably unfettered access to a radical jihadist and his family for two years. General Abu Osama raises his young sons to become Islamist fighters, but what if they just want to […]
23-year-old activist Nadia Murad has a horrifying personal story to tell. But her ability to relate it is a rare beacon of hope for her minority community of Yazidis. They were targeted by ISIS for systemic rapes and genocidal violence. As one of the few Yazidis who speaks to the Western press, Nadia carries their […]
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 […]
NYC PREMIERE Northern New Mexico: an area hard hit by the opioid crisis and still reeling from the 2008 recession. Exploring a community with few public resources and a depressed population, The Providers profiles three healthcare providers working for El Centro, a safety-net clinic network covering 22,000 square miles that serves those without agency, health insurance or […]
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 […]
NYC PREMIERE Surrounding Ghana’s Lake Volta — the largest man-made lake on Earth — is an active child-slavery industry. Sold by desperate families and abused by fishing masters, some 20,000 children work in perilous conditions. Activists like Stephen Kwame Addo, who escaped from such a fate himself, work to rescue as many children as possible and rehabilitate […]
As reproductive rights grow more embattled, award-winning filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, The Devil Came on Horseback) trace the legacy of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision. One surprising revelation is how much abortion rights were supported by Republicans in the 1960s. The film “reminds us […]
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 […]