US PREMIERE Students across the African continent come together for an annual contest of oratory skills and knowledge of the law. The film follows diverse teams of law students as they prepare for this prestigious, high-stakes mock trial, the African Human Rights Moot Competition. In her feature film debut, former lawyer-turned-filmmaker Shameela Seedat gives us […]
WORLD PREMIERE Gazi “Dusty” Simelane and Linda “Stones” are country music singers living in Swaziland. The film captures their wondrous ten-day road trip through the American south, gifting us with great music and leaving us questioning the intersectional issues of race, power, and whether any demographic can lay claim to country music, or any other […]
NYC PREMIERE A drum master from Japan and a Korean adoptee from Minnesota boldly convene an all-female troupe to perform Taiko, the Japanese drumming art that has been off-limits to women for centuries. As the early menace of Covid rumbles in the background, the group faces down hurdles to prepare for a historic performance in […]
WORLD PREMIERE Stevan, a 60-year-old, former porn performer from Serbia awaits the outcome of a Kafkaesque trial process in a Maltese prison. The moody landscapes reflect the loneliness and desperate state he was in prior to his arrest for public exposure in this bizarre story, which unspools like an eerie mystery. – Ruth Somalo The […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE A Ghanaian mother of five survives the perilous journey to Europe in search of a better life, only to return to her village to reunite with her children, much to the disdain of family and neighbors. Steadfast in her convictions of what’s best, first-time filmmaker Fatimah Dadzie tells her own unique story […]
NYC PREMIERE After discovering the work of Oscar Torres, her once world-famous queer filmmaker cousin, Victoria Linares journeys down a path of kindred self-discovery. Through reconstructions of Torres’ intimate memories living under the authoritarian regime of Trujillo in 1950s Dominican Republic, Linares creates a world between fiction and fact, casting her family in these reenactments […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Ithaka documents John Shipton, father of Julian Assange, in his tireless efforts to stop the British government from extraditing his son to the US to face espionage charges. While Assange’s health deteriorates in a British prison, Shipton wages a fight both political and personal as he works to build support so his […]
US PREMIERE After a shocking discovery about the fate of an old friend, director Tin Dirdamal embarks on an entrancing train through Vietnam to visit him with his young daughter. Along the way father and daughter ponder unanswered questions, with the sights they encounter on their journey resonating with the depths of their philosophical insights. […]
WORLD PREMIERE Far from the unfavorable images often espoused in pop culture, today’s teens are some of the most engaged, thoughtful, creative, courageous, and self-aware of any era. Filmmaker and middle-school educator Alexis Neophytides gifts us this survey of thirteen-year-olds from across the globe as they navigate the joys and complexities of that seminal age. […]
NYC PREMIERE For his 2015 Oscar-nominated film Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky memorably captured the key moments of the Maidan Revolution in 2013-14 that ushered in pro-democracy political change. In his latest film, his subject is exponentially even more urgent, as Ukraine faces an existential threat when Russia launches its […]