The stunning island of Hispaniola is shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, countries with a complicated history and tense relations. In 2013, the DR’s Supreme Court retroactively stripped the citizenship of residents of Haitian descent, leaving more than 200,000 people stateless, subject to immediate deportation, and devastating loss. In the midst of staggering intolerance, […]
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE | A chronicle of the life of saxophonist Ronnie Scott, from poor, Jewish kid growing up in 1940s East End, London to the owner of the legendary night club, Ronnie’s. Glorious clips from performances by jazz greats spanning decades—Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, Van Morrison, Chet Baker, and […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE | Photographer Lene Marie Fossen’s extreme form of anorexia is at the center of her artistic practice, giving the young woman a tool to engage in the representation of her own illness. This haunting portrait reveals how she explores her struggles through her own self-transcendent photography. At once beautiful but undeniably painful, her […]
Nasrin Sotoudeh never stood down from a tough battle as a human rights attorney in Iran. Fans of filmmaker Jafar Panahi will remember her appearance in his subversive film Taxi. Now she’s serving a prison sentence of 38 years for representing women who protested the country’s mandatory hijab law. This immersive portrait weaves extensive filming with […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE This extraordinary portrait reveals artist, sailor, horse trainer, filmmaker, and projectionist Carlotta, who has never been able to recognize a single face, not even her own or her mother’s. Curious neuroscientist-turned-film director Valentin Riedl befriends the elusive artist, constructing a film that allows the audience to venture inside a remarkable mind and […]
WORLD PREMIERE | Venezuela’s recent political upheavals are made vivid in A La Calle—meaning “to the street.” Covering multiple perspectives in the tradition of epic documentaries such as The Square or Winter on Fire, the film captures history unfolding over several years. Filmmakers Maxx Caicedo and Nelson G. Navarrete—Venezeulan himself—gain close access to Leopoldo López, whose arrest […]
NYC PREMIERE Karen Marshall is a respected therapist who specializes in the treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder, a condition formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, often linked to a history of childhood abuse. Karen has a unique perspective on the disorder, as she juggles 17 personalities of her own. Director Olga Lvoff sensitively explores the […]
WORLD PREMIERE Operation Infektion is a New York Times Opinion documentary that begins in the Soviet Union in 1959, when one of the world’s greatest disinformation engines was born. By way of animation and riveting interviews with Soviet disinformation agents, the series reverse-engineers the KGB playbook that concocted viral lies in a pre-Internet era. The film pulls […]
WORLD PREMIERE Ofra Bloch, a New York-based psychoanalyst specializing in trauma, was born in Jerusalem to a Jewish family that emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s. Disturbed by the resurgence of fascism and anti-Semitism around the world, Ofra travels to Germany, Israel, and Palestine to confront her own deep-seated feelings about Germans and Palestinians, and […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Alicia has been in the care of the Netherlands Child Welfare Bureau since she was one year old. Rejected, constantly moved and desperate for her mother’s affection, the child grows up in front of the viewer’s eyes in this raw and powerful portrait of institutionalized childhood. A gem of observational cinema, at […]