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 […]
NYC PREMIERE Filmmaker Dror Moreh proved himself an expert navigator of powerful figures in his Oscar®-nominated film The Gatekeepers, about the leaders of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency. Now he employs his talents to probe the American-led negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in 2000. The main insiders on camera are six top American diplomats who testify […]
LEARNING TO SKATEBOARD IN A WARZONE (IF YOU’RE A GIRL) DIR: Carol Dysinger In the war-torn city of Kabul, a class of young girls from disadvantaged neighborhoods learns to read, write—and skateboard—in director Carol Dysinger’s love letter to a place she has filmed in for the last fifteen years. Courtesy of Lifetime Films/A&E IndieFilms. (USA/UK, […]
FIRE IN PARADISE DIR: Drea Cooper, Zachary Canepari On the morning of November 8, 2018, a seemingly small fire broke out in Butte County, California near the town of Paradise. Over the course of a few short hours, it grew into the country’s deadliest wildfire in over a century, killing 85 people and destroying Paradise. […]
NYC PREMIERE Filmmaker Dror Moreh proved himself an expert navigator of powerful figures in his Oscar®-nominated film The Gatekeepers, about the leaders of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency. Now he employs his talents to probe the American-led negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in 2000. The main insiders on camera are six top American diplomats who testify […]
Israeli attorney Lea Tsemel has defended Palestinians in court for five decades, from nonviolent demonstrators to armed militants. To many Israeli Jews, Tsemel is a controversial figure, even a traitor, willing to defend the enemy, but she remains steadfast in her belief that her clients’ crimes are acts of resistance that must be heeded. Directors […]
Winner of the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, The Cave takes us to a subterranean landscape that feels akin to the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max. Warlords have made the earth’s surface uninhabitable in Syria, so medical workers led by the female Dr. Amani have created a hospital underground the city of Ghouta, […]
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE From the creators of Shadow of Truth, one of the most-watched true-crime documentary series on Netflix, comes this new four-part chronicle of a dark chapter in Israeli crime history. Beginning in the early 1970s and continuing into the ’80s, the bodies of five women were found along Israel’s coastal highway. Sharing disturbing similarities, were […]
NYC PREMIERE Two-time Oscar-winner Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, American Dream) re-examines the story of Americans taken hostage by Iranian revolutionaries in 1979. Focusing on a rescue mission, the film plays like a thriller. Kopple draws upon never-before-heard audiotapes from inside the White House, as well as new interviews with hostages, rescuers, Iranians and even President […]
In this Cannes and SXSW Film Festival winner, filmmaker Waad al-Kateab—working with director Edward Watts—courageously captures life in Syria through five years of civil war, bearing witness to the brutal conflict. During this time, she falls in love with a young doctor, marries and has a daughter, Sama. Once a mother, al-Kateab must decide between […]